ABSTRACT
Connecting with the growing importance and profoundly changing context of local and regional development introduced in Chapter 1, this chapter addresses this challenge for concepts and theories: to provide frameworks to understand local and regional development. Concepts and theories are developed to help us interpret and make sense of how and why things work out in the ways that they do. They should provide us with usable definitions of concepts, an understanding of the main causal agents and relationships and how these may be articulated in mechanisms and processes. Concepts and theories are developed to help us understand and explain local and regional development across space in place and over time. The kinds of concepts and theories we might use for interpretation are closely linked to our answers to the questions of what kind of local and regional development and for whom discussed in Chapter 2. This chapter reviews the most important and influential concepts and theories of local and regional development. It provides an accessible and critical discussion of the main frameworks of understanding and explanation. Each approach is reviewed, its limitations discussed and connections are made to the substantial literature on theories of local and regional development for further reading and reflection.
