Introduction to the second edition: novelties and advances

The space-economy has never been static, but has always shown a state of flux. Regions are normally in transition; they are work in progress. As a consequence, we observe a complex evolution of regional systems that varies between growth and decline. Static location and allocation theories may be helpful in understanding underlying structures in regional economies, but do not offer a full-scale picture of the development of multi-actor processes and of the perpetual or temporal impediments for regional growth and prosperity. The conceptualization and solid explanation of regional growth, and differences therein, is still largely a mystery for the research community in many countries. There is no uniform panacea for enhancing or accelerating the development trajectory of regions in a national or supranational economy. Therefore, regional policy is still in many cases a black box; the outcomes of intensified regional growth strategies are often largely unpredictable. Best guesses are more common than testable and operational estimates of policy impacts. Against the above-mentioned backgrounds, the editors of the Handbook of Regional Growth and Development Theories published a decade ago a comprehensive volume with a rich collection of advanced contributions on the above challenges in regional economics and regional science. In the ten years since then the world, both the empirical regional world and the theoretical and empirical reflection on growth and development issues, has not come to a standstill. We have become sadder and wiser after economic crises, regional fragmentation trends, the introduction of radical technological innovation, and the awareness of failures of regional policy. However, we have also enriched our knowledge horizon, with new insights and new methods and theories of regional analysis. The time has now come to take a refreshing and new look at the achievements of regional growth and development theories. Ten years after the publication of the first edition of the Handbook of Regional Growth and Development Theories, we were asked by the publisher to update the volume. At first glance this request seemed exaggerated, since not much new appeared to have happened in a so short period of time. After serious thoughts, however, we realized that in the past ten years, new insights into the explanation of regional growth had been put forward, and some theories, which ten years ago were not so attractive, had come to the fore. We, therefore, decided to accept the proposal, being sure that realization of this request could lead to an interesting scientific work with a decisive value added. Our effort has been to create a new edition enriched with the novelties of these past years. With this goal in mind, we first identified some theories and issues that were missing in the first publication and that gained in the meantime great importance in the interpretation of regional growth. For this reason, various new chapters were added.