A policy, adopted by government, aimed at redressing uneven development within a country. The incentives for a government to tackle regional imbalance include: a desire to alleviate regional unrest, the wish to unite party representatives from poorer, as well as richer regions, a yearning for social justice, the need to check out-migration from disadvantaged regions, and the ambition to use fully the human resources and plant of a declining area.

Measures include: improving the infrastructure; building new towns to move people away from poor housing stock and to stimulate the construction industry; and providing inducements to new industry to locate in the area in the form of tax incentives, grants and subsidies, and the provision of purpose-built factories.

Recent thinking, however, has argued that disadvantaged regions will be regions of cheap labour which will ultimately attract investment without government intervention or expenditure, and there has been a shift in Britain from assistance at a regional level to assistance to smaller, well-defined units. See enterprise zone, urban development corporation.

A Dictionary of Geography. Copyright © Susan Mayhew 1992, 1997, 2004. All rights reserved.