Către un concept operațional al dezvoltării competitive în plan teritorial

Abstract

This paper emphasizes the conceptual need for an agreement on reassigning priorities of competitive development from policies aiming at reducing regional differences to policies encouraging functional integration of a development area. The underlying rationale in shifting the analytical focus rests on the political-economic and socio-cultural characteristics of a habitat that indeterminably amplify or scale down the benefits of economic activities. The permanence of spatial developmental disparities suggests that the strategic directions of any initiative targeting regional competitiveness should follow the lines of (1) maximizing its competitive impact and (2) matching the territorial specificity. According to this perspective, the paper discusses an original theoretical construct and points to graphical representations of operational forms that may configure a policy of territorial development along four co-existent levels: (1) urban fields, (2) clusters, (3) development areas, and (4) disadvantaged areas. The main implication for public policy initiatives resides in smoothing the progress towards building up such a potential for growth. A selected list of recommendations is therefore advanced in compliance with the expeditiousness imperative, namely: (1) adjusting public policy interventions to geographically variable areas of development; (2) prioritizing financial assistance according to integration difficulties specific to a certain area of development, whose coordinates are described along variable geographical scales (local, regional, national and, possibly, international) and functional potentialities; (3) enhancing the complementary role of private and community interventions in developing the programming capability.