Economic success is spatially uneven. Some places do better than others, and there are plenty of data on regional variations in investment, employment and incomes to support this.
In many countries the state used to try to manage and spread growth by providing incentives for inward investment in specially chosen 'development areas'. In recent decades, however, there has been a shift to what is sometimes called the neoliberal agenda. Here the state stands back and it is the localities, both urban and rural, that try to improve their own prosperity, according to local circumstances. A former industrial city in the north of England, for instance, will have different problems from, say, an island in the Hebrides. Sometimes it is necessary to regenerate the existing infrastructure. Rebranding is also increasingly involved: places are given a new image to use in selling them to the wider world.
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