Provided for non-commercial research and educational use only.

Not for reproduction, distribution or commercial use.

This article was originally published in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, published by Elsevier,
and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the authors benefit and for the benefit of the authors institution,
for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution,
sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institutions administrator.

All other uses, reproduction and distribution, including without limitation commercial reprints, selling or licensing
copies or access, or posting on open internet sites, your personal or institutions website or repository, are
prohibited. For exceptions, permission may be sought for such use through Elseviers permissions site at:
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/permissionusematerial
Rossi U. 2009. Growth Poles, Growth Centers. In Kitchin R, Thrift N (eds) International Encyclopedia of Human
Geography, Volume 4, pp. 651656. Oxford: Elsevier.
ISBN: 978-0-08-044911-1
Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd.

Author's personal copy

Growth Poles, Growth Centers
U. Rossi, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
It can be argued that the theory of what came to be
known as growth poles (poles de croissance) a magic
label or a mythic catchword as some commentators put
it at the time symbolized in the 1950s and the 1960s
what industrial districts theory and discourse represented
in the 1980s and the 1990s: a pathbreaking strand of research and theoretical elaboration, intimately linked to
the leading approaches of industrial policy being adopted
at the local level, particularly in the disadvantaged regions of both developed and developing countries. It is
thereby interesting to look back again to the theory of
growth poles and centers and to its translation into a
concrete strategy of regional policy, also because it testies to the ways in which theories and concepts of regional development cyclically appear and disappear
within this fi eld of inquiry and its related policy sphere.
This circulation of ideas sheds light on the highly historicized and contingent character of regional economic
development policies and theories. Regional policies
witness the spirit of the times in which they appear and
take form and all of them are, in a way or in another,
subjected to cycles of rise, consolidation, decline, and
then more or less rapid dismissal.
While the place where growth pole theories and
strategies appeared and gained their academic reputation
was France, for industrial districts theory and some other
more recent regional development theories and policy
recipes this role has been played by Italy and most notably by the Third Italy. In both cases, these theories and
the related policy instruments have acquired an infl uence
transcending their respective contexts of origin and have
been applied in a growing number of regions in both the
developed and developing countries. Variants of growth
poles and centers policies have been implemented all
over the world, as this article documents in more detail
by referring to cases in Southern Europe, Latin America,
and Northern America. The variety of policy applications
shows how growth pole theory has become a truly crossnational instrument and conceptual framework of regional policy during the post-war decades. This is a
demonstration of the high level of homogenization at a
world-scale level experienced by regional policies during
the FordistKeynesian era.
A difference between Fordist and post-Fordist regional concepts and related models of economic and
spatial policy lies in the fact that the former, such as

growth pole theory, have been adopted most frequently

within the context of lagging behind regions, while the
latter, such as industrial districts theory and other more
recent conceptual tools in the fi eld, have been primarily
formulated with reference to more prosperous regions
of Western Europe (Third Italy, Baden-Wu rttemberg,
Catalonia, etc.). This shift testies to the changing perspective that has gained ground in regional development
studies and policies in recent years as compared to the
situation in the post-war decades, with attention being
diverted from the structural conditions of less-favored
regions and a greater emphasis being placed on the
conditions of economic success rather than on the recovery from economic backwardness.
In light of this shift in regional development literature
and policy action, this article presents and discusses the
scholarly literature dealing with growth pole theory and
strategies. The article is organized as follows: fi rst, it
reconsiders the conceptual value of growth pole theory;
second, it analyzes the implementation of growth pole
strategies in a number of regional contexts at an international level; fi nally, some conclusions are drawn refl ecting
on the intellectual legacy of this regional development
theory and policy experience.

The Theories of Growth Poles and

Centers: Potentials and Pitfalls
As originally presented in the mid-1950s and onward
by French economist Francois Perroux, growth pole
theory was a largely abstract conceptualization. The
theory implied the idea of a complex of industries mutually linked by functional relations and dominated by a
propulsive industry (the so-called industrie motrice), the
latter being the engine of the development dynamic,
thanks to its intrinsic capacity to innovate and stimulate
economic growth as well as to nurture the formation of
other economic activities and industries (the so-called
industries mues, or mute industries).
Conceptually, Perroux premised his theory upon a
neo-Schumpeterian understanding of the mechanics of
development within capitalist economies. Development
proceeds, in Schumpeters view, by the direct and the
indirect effects of innovations which are able to take an
economy away from a stationary equilibrium (both sectoral and spatial). This means that the newer and more
effi cient industries in which innovations take place grow

651

Author's personal copy

652

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

at a faster pace compared to the older and more static

industries. Regional economic development, therefore,
implies cumulative sectoral and spatial differentiation in
impact and thus deviates from a stationary conception
of equilibrium growth. Building on this conceptual
argumentation, which had many points of convergence
with subsequent theories of unbalanced and cumulative
growth (notably those of leading economists and planners
such as Albert Hirschmann, Gunnar Myrdal, and John
Friedmann), Perroux thought that in order to act as a
pole the propulsive industry should satisfy the three
criteria of: (1) large size, (2) a potential of economic
leadership, and (3) a rate of growth faster than that of the
local and regional economy in which it becomes embedded. The existence of these conditions allowed
the deployment of a mechanic of polarization, which in
Perrouxs view could take place in two specifi c respects:
fi rst, the leading fi rm can make anticipation of demand,
both correct and incorrect, affecting smaller rms; second, the effects of the leading fi rm is able to change the
balance of factor inputs in other fi rms.
In formulating the growth pole theory, critics have
noted that Perroux referred to a conventionally abstract,
topological space of Euclidean kind. It was only at a
subsequent stage of the debate on growth poles that some
scholars, especially in France, sought to apply Perrouxian
theory to a geographic dimension of enquiry and theoretical refl ection. Francophone human geographers were
in the forefront of this attempt. At that time, human
geographers and most notably economic geographers had
become persuaded about the necessity to rethink conventional categories and visions of regional growth and
change, particularly those inherited from the tradition of
regional geography established by Vidal de la Blache and
his followers in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. This
emergent body of geographic thinking and research advocated the embracement of a more proactive approach to
regional enquiry, which was presented under the banner of
geographie active. In doing so, these geographers asserted the
aim of going beyond the objective and prefi xed identity
and status of regional economic spaces while paying
greater emphasis on the role of the state and other planning entities in giving form and shape to regional economies and societies. While the homogenous region was
the favorite regional form of Vidalian geographers, during
post-war decades and most notably during the 1960s the
success of polarization theories led to the fore debates
about the so-called polarized region. According to those
proposing this concept such as Jacques Boudeville, a polarized region exists only as a product of a regional economic planning and policy initiative.
Somehow consistently with the aim of spatializing
growth pole theory, other authors most notably urban
scholars referred to a location, usually a city-region,
having a polarizing effect and potential in terms of

growth center. This latter fi eld of enquiry offered an

expanded interpretation of the Perrouxian theory of
growth poles, trying to show how the role played by
growth centers in regional development is a particular
case of the general process of innovation diffusion. In
doing so, these scholars drew on functional urban theory:
in particular, Brian Berrys conceptualization of urban
systems theorizing a system of cities arranged in a hierarchy according to the functions performed by each.
Discussions about the critical size of the city for being a
growth center were central to this line of enquiry, with
the 250 000 population fi gure being the conventional
threshold. Theorizers of growth centers related the differential of demographic growth displayed by cities and
metropolitan areas to the local economic structure and
particularly to the sectoral division of labor at the urban
level. In advanced countries these authors argued the
greater the earnings derived from primary activities, the
lower the growth. As earnings from manufacturing increase, the growth rate tends to stabilize around the national average. The greater the share of earnings from the
tertiary sector, involving innovative activities such as
research and development and education, the greater the
population growth rate.
But even in those contributions that retained a closer
linkage to Perrouxian theory, while attempting to offer a
spatialization of the theory itself, the conceptual mismatch was evident. In general terms, the translation of
the Perrouxian theory of the growth pole into a theory of
the growth center (or growth areas, development nuclei,
core areas, according to the varying defi nitions) entailed
a translation of an economic concept into a geographic
concept. This act of translation from the realm of economic space to that of geographic space has been among
the most controversial and critiqued aspects in this literature. While Perrouxian theory itself did not remain
untouched by critiques stressing its incompleteness and
vagueness, an even much stronger and more severe
criticism has been directed against the geographic applications and reformulations of his theory. Geographic
translations of the Perrouxian theory have been widely
criticized for absence of theoretical rigor and sophistication, for lack of a satisfactory empirical evidence and at
the same time for a tendency toward empiricism. According to critics, the concept of growth center has
exceeded the original conceptualization of the Perrouxian notion of growth pole, but at the same time has also
developed an ambiguous relationship with it. In particular, three weaknesses have been identifi ed within
those theoretical efforts attempting to spatialize growth
pole theory and to apply it to specifi c geographic and
policy contexts. First, critics have questioned the basic
assumption that the growth pole in geographic space (the
growth center) was simply a specifi c variant of the
growth pole in economic space, producing the semantic

Author's personal copy

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

confusion of attributing to a location the growth characteristics of the pole (industry); second, critics expressed
skepticism about the main assumption underlying the
geographic translation of growth pole theory, that is, the
idea that the natural growth pole existing in geographic
space could be automatically replicated in the form of a
planned growth pole; third, they lamented the loss of the
original neo-Schumpeterian attention toward economic
innovation and signaled, on the contrary, a prevailing
emphasis being laid on rm size with its multiplier potentials as a distinguishing feature of growth centers and
poles.
However, despite this conceptual looseness as regards
the relationship to the Perrouxian formulation, the geographic understanding of growth pole theory provided a
bridge with another and older set of theories investigating
the organization of human activity in geographic space:
most notably, August Loschs economics of industrial location and Walter Christallers central place theory. Albeit
these theories and the geographic reformulations of
growth pole theory differ in their way of reasoning, the
former embracing a distinctively deductive method and
the latter an inductive method of analysis, it can be
nonetheless argued that they are complementary in their
contribution to regional science. In fact, while Jacques
Boudevilles theory provides an explanation of the developmental impact of localized poles of growth in geographic space, it is not by itself a theory of location
explaining where the functional growth poles are or where
they will be localized in the future. To clarify this, some
authors have argued that the growth pole theory should
rely on theories of location, such as those of Losch and
Christaller. In fact, central place and industrial location
theories, despite their obsession with spatial regularities
and their blindness toward the understanding of the dynamics of economic growth, are to be regarded as useful
points of departure for analyzing the impact of development in a given center on the other centers and, in doing
so, appear to well supplement theories of growth poles and
centers, which on their part concentrate their analytical
efforts on the functioning of the economic process.
The translation of the growth pole conceptualization
into a geographic theory of regional development has
proved to be problematic not only at a theoretical level
but also at a practical level. The experiments of regional
policy that have been undertaken in different regions of
the world are illustrative of the potential as well as the
limitations of this controversial theory and policy tool.

Using Growth Pole Theory as a Regional

Development Policy
The formulation of growth pole theory and the related
application to concrete regional contexts arose in the

653

wake of the search for policy and planning tools to solve

problems of imbalance among regions in both industrialized and so-called underdeveloped countries during
the post-war decades. Despite its conceptual vagueness
and elusiveness, as highlighted in the previous section,
growth pole theory proved to be a highly popular tool of
regional policy in a number of different geographic and
economic contexts. Its popularity largely lies in the fact
that it was viewed by planners and policymakers as a sort
of complete theory of economic growth, capable of integrating all interrelated aspects of development in a
large variety of geographic settings.
In Southern Europe growth pole policies have been
pursued in Italy and Spain in the 1950s and the 1960s. At
the time these countries strongly differed in their political, economic, and geographic situations. Italy was an
emerging capitalist country, experiencing an intense
process of industrialization in the years between 1958 and
1963, albeit its economic geography was strongly characterized by a deep NorthSouth divide. On the other
hand, Spain was politically isolated, the economy
strongly nationalized and heavily regulated from the
center, while the dominant features of its economic
geography were not those of dualism as in Italy but of
fragmentation and dispersal: Spains main centers of activity were far apart from each other and were linked by
an imperfectly developed transportation system. In Italy,
a growth pole strategy was devised in the southern regions of the country. The growth pole strategy took the
form of an industrialization plan which was organized by
concentrating public investments in a relatively large
number of industrial poles, in which the mechanic of
growth was to be generated by the settling of a propulsive
industry specializing in a capital-intensive and relatively
technologically advanced sector of the economy. A law
approved by the Italian Parliament in 1957 established
about 100 industrial poles, even though those that proved
to be effective were much fewer and even more importantly the propulsive effect of many of them proved
to be weaker than that envisaged by Perrouxian theoretical framework. Several poles of industrial growth
demonstrated to have been created with goals of consensus building, consistently with the functioning of the
Italian system of political clientelism. In the end, only a
limited number of regions had benefi ted from the growth
pole strategy: the Campania region with some large industrial complexes established in the broader metropolitan area of Naples; the Puglia region with a large
chemical industrial settlement in Brindisi and a big steel
plant in Taranto; and then Sicily with the industrial sites
of Gela and Syracuse specializing in chemicals and
petrochemicals. Geographically the policy strategy was
therefore implemented mainly in the coastal regions,
while the inland areas became only marginally involved
in the industrialization plan.

Author's personal copy

654

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

In Spain, the growth pole policy was much more selective than the one implemented in Italy: in 1964, seven
poles were established (Saragoza, Sevilla, Valladolid, La
Coruna, Vigo, Burgos, and Huelva) and, in 1969, fi ve more
poles were created by the national government. One of the
most interesting facts in the establishment of these poles
was that they were not concentrated in the most backward
regions. Thus, in the Spanish experience the growth pole
strategy was not used as an instrument for developing the
poorest regions, but was approached as a way to fi nd
suitable centers for expansion along the major (present or
intended) transport and development axes. This means
that considerations of regional equity were not central to
the pursuit of the policy strategy. In general, the strategy
suffered from a lack of interinstitutional coordination
between the national and the regional levels of government, and its effects were limited by the scant attention
that was devoted to crucial issues in regional economic
development such as the enlargement of the fi rm size
(Spanish industry was dominated by very small fi rms at
the time) and the linkage with environmental and social
issues such as the provision of social housing.
One of the best-known growth pole strategies has been
the one pursued in the Appalachian Region in the United
States. This was an unusual example of lagging region, as it
was located between two of the most highly industrialized
and urbanized regions of the world, the Atlantic megalopolis and the industrial Midwest. The Appalachian
Regional Commission viewed the lack of urban centers
capable of providing producer services, trained labor, and
other external economies as the factors lying behind the
backwardness of this region. It is in light of this context
that the Appalachian Regional Development Act which
was approved in 1965 has to be understood. In contrast to
the scattering of public investments that characterized
earlier attempts to aid depressed areas, the Act concentrated the public investments in areas where there was the
greatest potential for future growth. The Commission
identifi ed 30 growth areas as principal recipients of the
public investments. Each area was organized around a
growth center, which was dened as a complex consisting of one or more communities or places, which, taken
together, should provide, or were likely to provide, a range
of cultural, social, employment, trade and service functions for itself and its associated rural hinterland. A recent assessment of this policy experiment has pointed to
some critical issues that resemble those raised with reference to the Italian and the Spanish experiences (especially the former): an inconsistency between theory and
implementation; the low level of place selectivity and the
identifi cation of too many areas, many of which could not
reasonably qualify as growth centers; the policys inherent
exposure to political pressures. Especially the latter has
proven to be a decisive factor in growth pole strategies
failures or only partial success: the identifi cations of only a

few growth centers amid political demands and pressures

to designate many have been the main contradiction in the
implementation of this policy.
In Latin America growth pole strategies were devised
in almost all countries, even though concrete results were
poor. In Chile in the late 1960s a growth pole strategy was
established in each of 11 regions (typically the provincial
capital), a few of which were selected as functional poles:
for example, Arica for automobiles and electronics, Santiago for electronics, Concepcion for steel and petrochemicals, and Punta Arena for petrochemicals. However,
despite some promising signs of regional resurgence,
polarization strategy was adopted too passively on the
regional level and was abandoned by the national government too early to be effective. In Peru the 197175
plan attempted to alleviate the economic dominance of
LimaCallao through a decentralization policy which
identied two novel axes of national growth where secondary cities were located. However, the industrial aspects
of the pole growth strategy were overlooked and the
political will behind the strategy itself proved to be weak.
The Venezuelan case has been relatively well known,
particularly for the Ciudad Guayana project which, on the
one hand, transformed a frontier region into an integral
part of the national economy but on the other hand was
not exempt of enclave effects. In Colombia the 196972
Development Plan aimed to counteract Bogotas dominance by developing the next three largest cities (Medelln,
Cali, and Barranquilla) as equilibrium metropolises.
However, the strategy never got off the ground as the
Borrero administration that came into power in 1970s
subjugated polarization to sectoral priorities. In Bolivia,
the 197191 Plan published in 1970 included a growth
pole strategy with Cochabamba designated as a service
pole, Santa Cruz and Oruro as industrial poles, and the
much smaller centers of Sucre and Tarija as agro-industrial poles, but was never implemented and remained a
paper plan. In Argentina the 197075 Plan identifi ed
several regional growth poles, but the spatial choices were
poor and orientated by political motives rather than by a
policy rationality: for instance, three of the poles were in
Patagonia, which has only 2% of the population, while the
high-density areas of the North were relatively neglected.
In Brazil the most successful attempts at polarization
strategy have been the promotion of small metropolitan
poles within the Sao Paolo state and the transfer of the
administrative capital to Brasilia, but overall the regional
policies and programs in this country have been too diffuse to be described as a coherent growth pole approach.
Generally speaking, Latin American experiments of
growth pole policies have suffered from similar limitations
that have been detected with reference to other geographic contexts: politicization of localization choices, lack
of integration with wider national development strategies,
and neglect of institutional factors. Moreover, these

Author's personal copy

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

experiments have encountered a number of regionally

specic problems: most notably, the weakness of democratic political structures and the prevailing of authoritarian political regimes; the importance of monopolistic
industrial structures and associated autarchic economic
policies in these countries; the relative absence of middleclass elites, managerial talent and associationist leaders,
particularly in secondary cities; and the lack of an interdependent inter-urban network and the weak economic
and functional base of most Latin American cities, except
for coastal cities and capital cities.

Conclusion
Growth centers and poles strategies have been implemented in a tremendous variety of geographic settings
and socioeconomic contexts: not only in those illustrated
of the Italian Mezzogiorno, of Spain, Latin America, and
the Appalachian Region in the United States, but also in
other Western countries (Canada and the UK) as well as
in developing countries such as India and Tanzania.
While these development strategies have occasionally
achieved success, on the whole nal verdict is unquestionably negative: growth poles have not met original
expectations within academia, policymakers and the
wider public alike. Policys advocates lament the suspicious volte face that has led scholars of regional economic development fi rst to celebrate the virtues and
potentials of growth pole theories and policy recipes then
to quickly dismiss them as something passe or even as a
sort of relics of post-war top-down planning approach.
However, as a matter of fact, the theory originally proposed by Francois Perroux and subsequently amended by
other scholars of regional economic planning has substantially failed to generate self-sustaining regional development processes and then has disappeared along with
the general decline of Keynesian policies and of related
state-centered modes of local economic governance.
Even so, the intellectual legacy and infl uence of
growth pole theory are still remarkable. In particular,
some of the fundamental tenets and concepts in this
literature survive within contemporary strands of research commonly labeled as new geographical economics (the work, among others, of Krugman, Glaeser,
and Porter) and endogenous growth theory (led by
economists such as Lucas and Romer), which are highly
infl uential in todays mainstream regional and urban
economics. Most notably, ideas about agglomeration and
localization economies and a number of neighboring
concepts and catchwords such as industrial clusters,
cities and regions as engines of growth, learning regions, industrial districts, and the like are reviving the
classical, post-war tradition of regional development
studies of which growth pole theory has been an

655

important part. Some overly simplistic versions of growth

pole theories have become clearly obsolete, particularly
those associating economic and spatial externalities with
the size of a city (or a region). Other aspects of growth
pole theory are certainly outdated (the main are probably
the rigidly top-down approach to economic spatial
planning, and the neglect of the sociocultural factors in
regional development processes), but of course it would
be ungenerous to expect from a theory that was formulated in the 1950s to express views and conceptual
sensibilities that at the time had not appeared yet.
What has to be emphasized is the geographic focus of
the theory itself and its signifi cance in the light of the
current scenario of economic development and related
regional development studies. In the Introduction to this
article it has been noted how growth pole theory refl ected the spirit of the times in which it appeared in the
ways in which it gave prominence to the intervention in
the regions lagging behind both in developed and in
developing economies. Today, on the contrary, imperatives imposed by neoliberal ideologies are shifting attention from policy strategies tackling the structural
conditions of economic backwardness to those aiming at
enhancing the competitiveness of urban and regional
economies in an increasingly globalized economic and
societal realm. While the main body of economic theory
is shared by both contemporary and past strands of research, at least within mainstream urban and regional
economics, it is this shifting attention from the lessfavored to the prosperous regions and cities as subjects
and objects of theorization and intervention that makes
the difference between the past and the current state of
affairs within this fi eld of enquiry.
See also: Agglomeration; Cassa per il Mezzogiorno;
Central Place Theory; City-Region; Corridor and Axis
Development; Firms; Fordism; Fordism, Post-Fordism
and Flexible Specialization; Functionalism (Including
Structural Functionalism); Industrial City; Industrial
Districts; Industrial Location; Industrialization; Latin
American Structuralist School; Local Economic
Development; Metropole dequilibre; Neoliberal Economic
Strategies; Neoliberalism and Development; Region;
Regional Development Theory; Regional Inequalities;
Regional Planning and Development Theories; Regional
Science; Transport and Accessibility; Uneven
Development.

Further Reading
Berry, B. J. L. (1972). Hierarchical diffusion: The basis of developmental
fi ltering and spread in a system of growth centers. In Hansen, N. M.
(ed.) Growth Centers in Regional Economic Development. New York:
The Free Press.

Author's personal copy

656

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

Boudeville, J.-R. (ed.) (1968). Lespace et les poles de croissance.

Recherches et textes fondamentaux. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.
Darwent, D. F. (1969). Growth poles and growth centers in regional
planning a review. Environment and Planning 1, 5--32.
George, P., Guglielmo, R. and Kayser, B. (1964). La geographie active.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Hall, P. and Hay, D. (eds.) (1980). Growth Centres in the European
Urban System. London: Heineman.
Hansen, N. M. (ed.) (1972). Growth Centers in Regional Economic
Development. New York: The Free Press.
Hermansen, T. (1972). Development poles and development centres in
national and regional development. In Kuklinsky, A. (ed.) Growth
Poles and Growth Centres in Regional Planning. Paris: Mouton.
Lasuen, J. R. (1969). On growth poles. Urban Studies 6(2), 137--161.
Muscara`, C. (1967). La geografi a dello sviluppo. Sviluppo industriale e
politica geografi ca nellItalia del secondo dopoguerra. Turin: Edizioni
di Comunita`.

Nichols, V. (1969). Growth poles: An evaluation of their propulsive

effect. Environment and Planning 1, 193--208.
Parr, J. B. (1999). Growth-pole strategies in regional economic
planning: A retrospective view. Part 1. Origins and advocacy. Urban
Studies 36, 1195--1215.
Perroux, F. (1955). Notes sur la notion de pole de croissance. Economie
Appliquee 8, 307--320.
Perroux, F. (1964). Leconomie du XX sie`cle. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France.
Richardson, H. W. (1971). Regional development policy in Spain. Urban
Studies 8(1), 39--53.
Richardson, H. W. and Richardson, M. (1975). The relevance of growth
center strategies to Latin America. Economic Geography 51(2),
163--178.
Wood, L. E. (2001). From theory to implementation: An analysis of the
Appalachian Regional Commissions growth center policy.
Environment and Planning A 33, 551--566.