ABSTRACT
Economic geographers have demonstrated an interest in the issues of regional development within Third World countries only in comparatively recent times. Prior to the late 1960s, regional studies rarely stepped beyond traditional descriptions of regional variations in the distribution of resources to examine the processes and spatial patterns of development. Even in the wider development literature there were few contributions to regional development theory that focused specifically on underdeveloped countries. Myrdal's (1957) model of interregional income inequality, for example, was only implicitly framed in terms of underdeveloped countries, and it was left to others, notably Friedmann (1966), to promote Hirschman's (1958) ideas on the interregional transmission of economic growth. Regional planning had been a reality in many developed countries for several decades before it emerged in the Third World (Slater, 1975; Gilbert, 1976). Today, there are few countries that have not either expressed some regional goals in development or put into practice a strategy designed to facilitate more equitable spatial development of national resources.
