REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMMES: From prescriptive planning to flexible facilitation?

Broad-focusing development programmes at a regional level have been a major thrust by governments of developing countries over the last three decades. Most of the programmes addressed here have been entirely or partly financed by donor agencies. They have tended to concentrate on augmenting activities of government line agencies, and have mainly emphasized physical and social infrastructure, standardized support facilities to enterprises and individuals, and, sometimes, land use zoning and other measures to regulate the spatial distribution of facilities and activities. This article suggests that regional development programmes may become more effective if they are designed as more flexible instrumentsforpeople-centred development, exploiting potential comparative advantages of innovation, networking and institution building in a broad sense. Basic organizational and management requirements for this would be a decentralized set-up, substantial freedom from government administration, flexible organizational form, process planning with compatible systems of monitoring and co-ordination, active facilitation of initiatives from below and democratically minded leaders with broad management competence.