Introduction: Regional and local development in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

From both an academic and a policy perspective, regional and local development are themes which have oscillated in popularity over time but which continue to show remarkable resilience and persistence, despite the oft assumed aspatiality of dominant discourses of neoliberalism and globalisation. Glasson commented on the ‘fall and rise of regional planning’ (Glasson, 1992: 505) and some 23 years later this volatility in thinking and practice persists, but so too does a continued attachment to spatial interventions and spatially based development. In recent years, clear economic policy and theoretical shifts, as epitomised by the rise of New Economic Geography, the 2009 World Bank World Development Report (World Bank, 2009), which had economic geography as its guiding theme, and continued decentralisation and spatial planning interventions in numerous countries across the world show the persistent role which regional and local development plays (Pike et al., 2006). The papers assembled in this special issue seek to provide an insight into this fluid developmental terrain through the lens of recent developments in Australia and New Zealand. While both countries are part of the OECD and share similar economic and policy histories with the rest of the OECD, the embeddedness of neoliberalism, particularly in New Zealand (Peet, 2012) and the challenges, opportunities and responses posed by rapid economic growth in Australia, make them particularly interesting case-studies of how places, people and governments adapt to and respond to fluid economic circumstances and change. Australia’s pursuit of what it terms ‘structural adjustment programmes’ in response to economic change, and the reality that many mining towns now have transient populations, reflects changes in both the nature of economic activities and how urban systems have to adapt around them (Beer; Perry and Rowe, this issue). In New Zealand, Regional Development, after years in abeyance is now being reinstated but not as redistributive policy grounded on equity but rather as one geared to encourage market based foreign investment (Nel, this issue). It is also apparent that, as the papers in this special issue argue, regional and local development has evolved over time to consider and articulate new discourses and