ABSTRACT
In Latin America, the first regional planning programs were developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Numerous Latin American regional development programs attempted to increase use of water resources by imitating the Tennessee Valley Authority model. In Argentina, the growth pole model quickly emerged as a solution to regional inequalities. The promotion of industry became the regional development mechanism to accompany the global model of import substitution industrialization. The design and implementation processes associated with develop-mentalist regional plans have proven inadequate to the realities of reduced foreign investment, low domestic savings, and international monetary fund-enforced reorientation of state policies to enhance exports and debt payments. The decisionmaking model incorporates an analysis of the interests, resources, and organizational capacities of those groups affected by regional plans and seek to incorporate them. Economic crisis and austerity have forced such plans and their projected time frames to crumble and have invalidated much of the process of regional development planning.
