ABSTRACT
Development economics today has a new and chastened mood. Attention has shifted away from the theory of growth and into areas that seem more mundane: employment generation and income distribution are the most obviously popular fields at the time of writing. Alongside these themes, and still only partially integrated with the central concerns of the field, is the emergence or resurgence of interest in the spatial aspects of development and planning. Regional development, as it is most commonly termed, had indeed a kind of abortive beginning during the years of depression and war, more than a generation ago. Though regional planning was never wholly neglected, in the developing countries, it was lost almost entirely from sight for much of a generation. Today, however, country after country is discovering that the regional dimension of its employment and income problems is of fundamental importance; 1 there may even be a tendency in some quarters to overemphasize regional inequalities at the cost of adequate notice of inequalities in other dimensions.
