regional science – Álvaro Román

Regional development is a complex, global process, consisting of a series of changes aimed at achieving rich personalities within prosperous and democratic society. These changes are observed in the rises of per capita production, educational level and professional and moral qualities of the people, in the people’s political activity, in the use of their standards of living, in widespread cultural life, and in preserving the values of man’s environment. […]

However, not all the changes that occur in a region can be qualified as ‘development’. Only the changes that are accepted by the people concerned as concordant with directional trends can be called ‘development’. By ‘directional trends’ I refer to the conditions under which individual and social aims may be achieved within the scheme of a country’s development policy (Pióro, 1979: 195-196).

— Pióro, Z. (1979). The sociological concept of regional development. In: Kuklinski, A., Kultalahti, O. & Koskiaho, B. Regional dynamics of socioeconomic change, 195-202. Tampere: Finnpublishers.

The initial task is, I think, to eliminate imprecise thought processes which conceptually deceive us into handling people as we handle money or goods once we commence the process of aggregation. In order to illustrate this I would like to relate an experience which can hardly be unique. When I was three or four years old my father tried to teach me the principles of banking and we trotted along to the local establishment to deposit what I had accumulated in my savings box, including a very shiny silver crown. The next day I insisted on walking back to the bank to make sure that the people had really guarded my money. The clerk was very understanding and showed me the correct mix of coins. But the shiny crown was not among them and it could not be produced. I decided that savings banks did not really save money (Hägerstrand, 1970: 9).

— Hägerstrand, T. (1970). What about people in regional science? Papers of the Regional Science Association 24(1), 6–21.