Abstract
The previous argument has illustrated the divorce between theory and practice in most of what passes as regional economics. There are considerable differences between regional theory in Western Europe and North America. In Europe, mainly under the influence of Myrdal and Perroux, most specialists in regional economics give considerable weight to imbalance theory. They emphasise the extent to which the free working of the market mechanism in capitalist economies can aggravate the regional problem. In the United States the scale of the urban crisis in a predominantly urbanised society has forced some reappraisal of the interrelation between urban and regional problems. This emerges in the previously cited submissions to government commissions on rural poverty and urban crisis. But with relatively few exceptions regional and location theory in the United States is still hidebound by assumptions of self-balance through the free working of the market. Such neo-classical theory still postulates conditions for harmonious adjustment between regions, and fails to help policy-makers precisely because it is so unrelated to the structure and distribution of activity in modern capitalist economies.
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References
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Ibid.
Cf. Pierre Gabert, ‘La localizzazione della Popolazione Industriale nella Città di Torino e i Problemi dei Transporti Urban’, section 4 (La Tendenza dei lavoratori a raggruparsi nel dintorni delle aziende), in Le Grande Città Italiane, ed. Roberto Mainairdi, pp. 104ff.
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Holland, S. (1976). Theory, Practice and Policy Imperatives. In: Capital Versus the Regions. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15773-0_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15773-0_8
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