Regional Competitiveness as a New Approach in Regional Development

Spreading globalization and rapid developments in global sphere, the regional competitiveness found greater importance in accelerating to regional development. One of the outcomes of globalization is emerging the strong regional economies which their gross domestic products are higher than the GDP of most of the states. Accordingly some of experts firmly believe that these regions encourage the national economy more than the states. In response to this doctrine from the 1990s the concept of regional competitiveness has been changed into dominant issue in pubic political circles of developed and some developing countries. Resorting to this concept these countries try to reach to the clear policies to encourage regional development. Bearing this in mind the author tries to find the answer of some basic questions to facilitate the justification and description of some theoretical and conceptual developments and the sphere and dimension of regional competitiveness. This article contains the history of emerging the concept of regional competitiveness and the theoretical and descriptive models and the principal elements of the concept.