Regional planning and national development .

This book is a by-product of the First Asian Symposium on Regional Planning and National Development held in Mysore in 1974. It brings together selected papers by eminent scholars on the role of regional planning in national development, coming at a time when conventional approaches to development are being questioned and new approaches being sought to tackle problems which continue to plague developing countries despite their improvement in productivity and economic growth.

While the papers are heteroge neous in terms of themes and scope, several common factors emerge. To name a few-that the techniques and concepts of macro economic planning are not suited to micro planning; that existing approaches are largely meant for industrialized societies; that regional planning must reorient itself to become a tool for generating rural employ ment and removing poverty among marginalized people; that the multi level concept of regional planning requiring systems of regions both vertically and horizontally inter linked is favourable, and that the human and organizational dimensions of regional planning are crucial.

This volume highlights the achievement of the theory and practice of regional planning, and by identifying the major short comings has set the stage for the further effectiveness of regional planning as a tool for national development in the real sense.