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Rossi U. 2009. Growth Poles, Growth Centers. In Kitchin R, Thrift N (eds) International Encyclopedia of Human
Geography, Volume 4, pp. 651656. Oxford: Elsevier.
ISBN: 978-0-08-044911-1
Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd.
Introduction
It can be argued that the theory of what came to be
known as growth poles (poles de croissance) a magic
label or a mythic catchword as some commentators put
it at the time symbolized in the 1950s and the 1960s
what industrial districts theory and discourse represented
in the 1980s and the 1990s: a pathbreaking strand of research and theoretical elaboration, intimately linked to
the leading approaches of industrial policy being adopted
at the local level, particularly in the disadvantaged regions of both developed and developing countries. It is
thereby interesting to look back again to the theory of
growth poles and centers and to its translation into a
concrete strategy of regional policy, also because it testies to the ways in which theories and concepts of regional development cyclically appear and disappear
within this fi eld of inquiry and its related policy sphere.
This circulation of ideas sheds light on the highly historicized and contingent character of regional economic
development policies and theories. Regional policies
witness the spirit of the times in which they appear and
take form and all of them are, in a way or in another,
subjected to cycles of rise, consolidation, decline, and
then more or less rapid dismissal.
While the place where growth pole theories and
strategies appeared and gained their academic reputation
was France, for industrial districts theory and some other
more recent regional development theories and policy
recipes this role has been played by Italy and most notably by the Third Italy. In both cases, these theories and
the related policy instruments have acquired an infl uence
transcending their respective contexts of origin and have
been applied in a growing number of regions in both the
developed and developing countries. Variants of growth
poles and centers policies have been implemented all
over the world, as this article documents in more detail
by referring to cases in Southern Europe, Latin America,
and Northern America. The variety of policy applications
shows how growth pole theory has become a truly crossnational instrument and conceptual framework of regional policy during the post-war decades. This is a
demonstration of the high level of homogenization at a
world-scale level experienced by regional policies during
the FordistKeynesian era.
A difference between Fordist and post-Fordist regional concepts and related models of economic and
spatial policy lies in the fact that the former, such as
651
confusion of attributing to a location the growth characteristics of the pole (industry); second, critics expressed
skepticism about the main assumption underlying the
geographic translation of growth pole theory, that is, the
idea that the natural growth pole existing in geographic
space could be automatically replicated in the form of a
planned growth pole; third, they lamented the loss of the
original neo-Schumpeterian attention toward economic
innovation and signaled, on the contrary, a prevailing
emphasis being laid on rm size with its multiplier potentials as a distinguishing feature of growth centers and
poles.
However, despite this conceptual looseness as regards
the relationship to the Perrouxian formulation, the geographic understanding of growth pole theory provided a
bridge with another and older set of theories investigating
the organization of human activity in geographic space:
most notably, August Loschs economics of industrial location and Walter Christallers central place theory. Albeit
these theories and the geographic reformulations of
growth pole theory differ in their way of reasoning, the
former embracing a distinctively deductive method and
the latter an inductive method of analysis, it can be
nonetheless argued that they are complementary in their
contribution to regional science. In fact, while Jacques
Boudevilles theory provides an explanation of the developmental impact of localized poles of growth in geographic space, it is not by itself a theory of location
explaining where the functional growth poles are or where
they will be localized in the future. To clarify this, some
authors have argued that the growth pole theory should
rely on theories of location, such as those of Losch and
Christaller. In fact, central place and industrial location
theories, despite their obsession with spatial regularities
and their blindness toward the understanding of the dynamics of economic growth, are to be regarded as useful
points of departure for analyzing the impact of development in a given center on the other centers and, in doing
so, appear to well supplement theories of growth poles and
centers, which on their part concentrate their analytical
efforts on the functioning of the economic process.
The translation of the growth pole conceptualization
into a geographic theory of regional development has
proved to be problematic not only at a theoretical level
but also at a practical level. The experiments of regional
policy that have been undertaken in different regions of
the world are illustrative of the potential as well as the
limitations of this controversial theory and policy tool.
653
In Spain, the growth pole policy was much more selective than the one implemented in Italy: in 1964, seven
poles were established (Saragoza, Sevilla, Valladolid, La
Coruna, Vigo, Burgos, and Huelva) and, in 1969, fi ve more
poles were created by the national government. One of the
most interesting facts in the establishment of these poles
was that they were not concentrated in the most backward
regions. Thus, in the Spanish experience the growth pole
strategy was not used as an instrument for developing the
poorest regions, but was approached as a way to fi nd
suitable centers for expansion along the major (present or
intended) transport and development axes. This means
that considerations of regional equity were not central to
the pursuit of the policy strategy. In general, the strategy
suffered from a lack of interinstitutional coordination
between the national and the regional levels of government, and its effects were limited by the scant attention
that was devoted to crucial issues in regional economic
development such as the enlargement of the fi rm size
(Spanish industry was dominated by very small fi rms at
the time) and the linkage with environmental and social
issues such as the provision of social housing.
One of the best-known growth pole strategies has been
the one pursued in the Appalachian Region in the United
States. This was an unusual example of lagging region, as it
was located between two of the most highly industrialized
and urbanized regions of the world, the Atlantic megalopolis and the industrial Midwest. The Appalachian
Regional Commission viewed the lack of urban centers
capable of providing producer services, trained labor, and
other external economies as the factors lying behind the
backwardness of this region. It is in light of this context
that the Appalachian Regional Development Act which
was approved in 1965 has to be understood. In contrast to
the scattering of public investments that characterized
earlier attempts to aid depressed areas, the Act concentrated the public investments in areas where there was the
greatest potential for future growth. The Commission
identifi ed 30 growth areas as principal recipients of the
public investments. Each area was organized around a
growth center, which was dened as a complex consisting of one or more communities or places, which, taken
together, should provide, or were likely to provide, a range
of cultural, social, employment, trade and service functions for itself and its associated rural hinterland. A recent assessment of this policy experiment has pointed to
some critical issues that resemble those raised with reference to the Italian and the Spanish experiences (especially the former): an inconsistency between theory and
implementation; the low level of place selectivity and the
identifi cation of too many areas, many of which could not
reasonably qualify as growth centers; the policys inherent
exposure to political pressures. Especially the latter has
proven to be a decisive factor in growth pole strategies
failures or only partial success: the identifi cations of only a
Conclusion
Growth centers and poles strategies have been implemented in a tremendous variety of geographic settings
and socioeconomic contexts: not only in those illustrated
of the Italian Mezzogiorno, of Spain, Latin America, and
the Appalachian Region in the United States, but also in
other Western countries (Canada and the UK) as well as
in developing countries such as India and Tanzania.
While these development strategies have occasionally
achieved success, on the whole nal verdict is unquestionably negative: growth poles have not met original
expectations within academia, policymakers and the
wider public alike. Policys advocates lament the suspicious volte face that has led scholars of regional economic development fi rst to celebrate the virtues and
potentials of growth pole theories and policy recipes then
to quickly dismiss them as something passe or even as a
sort of relics of post-war top-down planning approach.
However, as a matter of fact, the theory originally proposed by Francois Perroux and subsequently amended by
other scholars of regional economic planning has substantially failed to generate self-sustaining regional development processes and then has disappeared along with
the general decline of Keynesian policies and of related
state-centered modes of local economic governance.
Even so, the intellectual legacy and infl uence of
growth pole theory are still remarkable. In particular,
some of the fundamental tenets and concepts in this
literature survive within contemporary strands of research commonly labeled as new geographical economics (the work, among others, of Krugman, Glaeser,
and Porter) and endogenous growth theory (led by
economists such as Lucas and Romer), which are highly
infl uential in todays mainstream regional and urban
economics. Most notably, ideas about agglomeration and
localization economies and a number of neighboring
concepts and catchwords such as industrial clusters,
cities and regions as engines of growth, learning regions, industrial districts, and the like are reviving the
classical, post-war tradition of regional development
studies of which growth pole theory has been an
655
Further Reading
Berry, B. J. L. (1972). Hierarchical diffusion: The basis of developmental
fi ltering and spread in a system of growth centers. In Hansen, N. M.
(ed.) Growth Centers in Regional Economic Development. New York:
The Free Press.