Calypso

By wcook

Richard M. McGahey, “Regional Economic Development in Theory and Practice”, in Richard M. McGahey and Jennifer S. Vey (Editors), Retooling for Growth: Building a 21st Century Economy in America’s Older Industrial Areas, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2008.

“To sail on a dream on a crystal clean ocean
To ride on the quest of a wild raging storm
To work in the service of life and the living
In search of the answer to questions unknown
To be part of the movement and part of the growing
Part of beginning to understand”
John Denver

Throw a rock out of any window these days and you‟ll hit something written about regionalism, clusters, knowledge-based economy or innovation. Choosing to review any of these topics is an invitation to have your eyes burst from the strain of having to review the literature in order to choose an appropriate work to discuss. McGahey‟s Regional Economic Development in Theory and Practice is in the Curmudgeon‟s opinion one of the better discussions on regionalism that has been published in recent years. This is not meant to be faint praise, but rather an observation that much of the research he observed is quite redundant, often ideological, and frequently too specialized or theoretical for the non-academic/think tank reader. For the most part McGahey avoids these pitfalls and offers a readable summary of the issues important to current regionalist dialogue

The Curmudgeon graduated from college (imagine that?) over forty years ago; he was reading then about the desirability, indeed, necessity of regionalization and at the time he thought rascally thoughts on how to overcome the evil dinosaurs and corrupt selfish interests which opposed these cutting edge new opportunities for growth in a global (back then we used the word international) economy. Nothing much seems to have changed since those early carvings on stone tablets from which the Curmudgeon read, except now the tabl