Abstract
Local development is a subject that arouses significant interest in the international scientific community in general, and in the Ibero-American one, in particular. The process of globalization has transformed the management of local development, altering the role that is played by local and regional entities, and it is the object of an important follow-up and analysis by academia. This research uses a bibliometric methodology and a fractional counting method, reviewing the 738 articles from the Scopus database in order to understand the state of Ibero-American research on local development, and analyze the scientific literature on the topic. The results show a significant increase in the number of publications in the 21st century, with Spain and Brazil leading the way. In addition, this research provides interesting results regarding the most influential authors on this topic, the most relevant journals, and the most important institutions and funding organizations. There are several areas of knowledge involved since local development is a transversal field, such as Social Science, environment, business, economics, and agriculture. A deep analysis of authors’ keywords identified new trends, linking local development with tourism, education, geotourism, climate change, local sustainable development, social innovation, and creativity, which provides academia with potential new lines of research.
Highlights
When considering local development, it is important to include an array of connected economic characteristics that influence the economic prosperity of a particular area [1], and a series of geophysical, social, and economic factors that together create a “breeding ground”, which results in activities that permit local areas to grow and flourish.Four elements must be combined: basic infrastructure in order to understand local development, telecommunications; active promotion of the area by local governments; natural resources, which can be exploited without damaging or undermining the environment; and, an active and conscientious local population
This research has been structured by analyzing the results : evolution research has been structured by analyzing the results in the following evolution of the of theThis historic volume of publications, the most influential authors and cited sections: references, most prolific historic volume publications, the most influential authorsmost and cited references, most prolific countries, mostofrelevant journals, most cited articles, important institutions andcountries, funding most relevant journals, cited articles, important institutions funding organizations, areas of most knowledge impliedmost on this topic, and research and trends in theorganizations, field of local areas of knowledge implied on this topic, and research trends in the field of local development
Local development can only arise from the willingness and commitment on the part of the the local initiative
Summary
It is important to include an array of connected economic characteristics that influence the economic prosperity of a particular area [1], and a series of geophysical, social, and economic factors that together create a “breeding ground”, which results in activities that permit local areas to grow and flourish.Four elements must be combined: basic infrastructure in order to understand local development, telecommunications; active promotion of the area by local governments; natural resources, which can be exploited without damaging or undermining the environment; and, an active and conscientious local population. Development strategies should take into account both the economic and non-economic aspects (with greater importance given to less developed areas) and should be combined in order to obtain the best results [2,3]. The development of these processes in a local or specific area as the best strategy for sponsoring growth justifies the relevance of local development. The fact that development processes in similar environments can produce vastly different outcomes is proof of the difficulty in finding a common set of activities or processes that sponsor local economic growth [4]. Economic growth in non-developed areas could, at first, be successful at the local level, whilst, at the same time, Resources 2019, 8, 124; doi:10.3390/resources8030124 www.mdpi.com/journal/resources
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