2023 Regional Science Lecture: Reframing regional development for ‘left behind’ places

The recent wave of populist discontent across Europe and North America has catapulted social and spatial inequalities to the forefront of domestic political agendas. High concentrations of advanced technology and capital in large metropolitan regions has increased regional divergence, increasingly disconnecting economically declining regions from the dominant narrative of agglomeration.

‘Left behind’ places, particularly former industrial regions, have become the economically and politically salient shorthand for key hotspots of disadvantage and discontent. They are reflections of relative economic decline through long-term processes of deindustrialization and economic restructuring.

‘Left behind’ places have been neglected by spatial policy over the past couple of decades, so how can we start thinking about reframing the concept of development for these regions? What might ‘development’ mean for ‘left behind’ places and their residents?

Fresh thinking and open dialogues are needed to find new approaches for designing more inclusive and sustainable place-based policies, something which pervades the theme of this seminar.

The speaker at the 2023 Regional Science Lecture is Professor Andy Pike, a Sir Henry Daysh Chair of Regional Development Studies, at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development (CURDS) at Newcastle university. His main research interests are geographical political economy of local, regional and urban development, governance and policy.