Marginalised areas as a public policy concern

This chapter is an attempt to sketch the broader context into which regional development for ‘left behind’ places, and the potential for their regeneration via ‘slow tourism’, the main focus of this book, is located. This context does not lend itself to easy generalisations. This becomes clear in Section One, which summarises recent changes in the distribution of incomes—at personal, regional and country level—in Europe and beyond, and finds that while inequality between countries has fallen, inequality within countries (whether between rich and poor families, or between dynamic and lagging or declining areas) has often increased. Section Two offers a brief account of the drivers of income inequality, focusing on the effects of trade (globalisation) versus technology (automation) on jobs and earnings, and emphasising local effects. Section Three reviews the current debate on the political consequences of regional decline, as manifest in electoral support for populist forces, in the light of competing paradigms in economic geography (‘place-based’ versus ‘people-based’ policy approaches). The final section discusses the implications for public policy for the revitalisation of lagging and declining areas, stressing the need to steer a new course, tapping into unused potential and local knowledge, and involving all relevant stakeholders.