Regional development agencies: abolishing, modification, rename implications for planning practice

Some years ago, I lived through the creation of England’s regional development agencies, and I watched them abolished after little more than a decade. The stated aim was to reduce public spending in urban planning practice, yet I could not shake the thought that the decision was also political, and that something more than a budget line had been lost. That question stayed with me, so I decided to test it against the experience of other countries. I began with countries comparable to England: strong and stable economies, strong political institutions, active responses to international environmental concerns, and well-developed social policies with community support. The leading Western members of the G8 were the natural starting point, since they have all built, reshaped, or closed regional development bodies of their own. I then added two further strong European economies, Spain and the Netherlands. For each country, I looked at what changed, why it changed, and what the change meant for planning practice. The aim is to find out whether England’s experience was exceptional, or part of a wider pattern of institutional change.

When the regional development agencies appeared, and where?

Regional development agencies emerged during the twentieth century as governments began creating dedicated institutions to address regional economic disparities and support areas that lagged behind national economic development. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the United States (1933) is often cited as an early model for this approach, followed by Italy’s Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (1950), a state instrument established to promote development in southern Italy. France created DATAR in 1963 as a national institution responsible for regional planning and spatial development. The 1963 decree establishing DATAR is reproduced in the 2013 Wahl report. Scotland and Wales subsequently established the Highlands and Islands Development Board (1965) and the Welsh Development Agency (1975, operational from 1976), respectively. Canada’s Western Economic Diversification (1987) and the Netherlands’ provincial development companies, including OOM (1975) and GOM (1978), extended this institutional approach into later decades.

A particularly significant wave of regional development agencies emerged in Britain following the Regional Development Agencies Act 1998. Eight agencies in England began operating in April 1999, followed by the London Development Agency in July 2000. Overall, these examples demonstrate how regional development institutions emerged in different political and administrative systems, particularly in countries seeking to address geographical inequalities, before becoming more widely adopted across Western Europe and North America.

What is the goal of creating a regional development agency?

The primary objective of a regional development agency in urban planning is to improve a region’s economic performance, particularly by reducing the gap between economically lagging areas and the national average. Agencies generally pursue this objective by coordinating public investment, attracting private investment, supporting local businesses and innovation, and bringing together stakeholders who might otherwise operate separately across administrative boundaries.

The cases examined here illustrate how these objectives have evolved over time. The Dutch agencies GOM and OOM initially emerged in response to industrial decline and unemployment, before expanding their activities into business development, innovation and investment promotion. DATAR combined the objective of territorial equality with spatial planning and long-term foresight. Canada’s western development agencies, meanwhile, were established to tailor federal economic support to the distinct needs of different regional economies.

Across these cases, a common purpose is evident: to bring regional economic development decisions closer to the regions concerned, rather than leaving them entirely to national ministries. However, governments have subsequently merged, restructured or abolished some of these agencies as institutional priorities shifted towards administrative coordination, organisational efficiency or fiscal restraint.

What is the study aim?

This study aims to go beyond reading papers, research and publications, official and non-official, in order to examine one question in depth: how the shared context of developed Western countries shapes the way they plan and develop. These countries have much in common. Their histories, origins, ways of life and social outlook have drawn them together on many occasions, as in the European Union, in spite of their earlier conflicts. They also share similar political party traditions. The study therefore asks what effect these commonalities have on planning practice and on the creation and change of development agencies. Its objectives are, first, to establish how each country runs itself in terms of funding and development decision-making. Second, it examines how each country’s political, social and cultural context affects those arrangements. Third, it compares the reasons agencies were created, modified, or abolished across the countries studied, to see whether England’s experience was exceptional or part of a wider pattern.

Key to results: green = confirmed; yellow = confirmed but update or add detail; orange = needs correction; grey = could not verify.

United States

Canada

France

Germany

Italy

Japan

Spain

Netherlands

Poland

The study in detail sequence

For each country, the study selected two development agencies that were abolished, merged, renamed, or otherwise changed. In the United States, the two selected were proposed for elimination but survived. Data were gathered in layers, starting from official primary sources: legislation and statutory instruments, parliamentary and ministerial documents, official gazettes, budget justifications and research-service reports. Government press releases then confirmed dates and decisions. The reasons for each change were taken from what the official record states. Where it gives no reasons, as in the Welsh abolition order, the study used press and academic commentary and marks those reasons as reported, not stated. Every date and legal status were cross-checked against several sources, and any reason that could not be confirmed is flagged as unverified. Having established what changed and why, the study then asks what each change meant for planning practice. It looks at how planning was structured, what planning work was carried out, where planning responsibilities moved, and what outcome each change was expected to deliver.

Table 2, Comparative Analysis of Agency Changes, Rationale, and Planning Implications

Having established what changed and why, the next task was to investigate what each change meant for planning practice. The same data had been verified twice, using two independent research platforms, referred to here as CH1 and CH2 . Each platform was then asked, separately, to find the research papers that identify the implications of each specific change, looking at four things: how planning was structured, what planning work was carried out, where planning responsibilities moved, and what outcome each change was expected to deliver. The findings from each platform were analyzed and set side by side in a comparison table of 18 cases across ten jurisdictions, with the reasons and the implications from each platform kept separate, so that agreement and difference between them stay visible. Where the platforms agree, the finding carries more weight. Where they differ in emphasis, both readings are shown. Where the literature itself describes an effect as potential or not established, as it does for the US cases and the Italian Cassa, the table reports it in those terms.

Table 3, Comparative Regional Development Agency Analysis

The final step was to take all of the data, the comparison between the checks and the implications each one identified, and look for what the countries have in common in relation to the aims and objectives of this study. The comparison covered eighteen cases across ten jurisdictions, with England and Wales counted separately. Six reasons families recur: fiscal consolidation and austerity; governance failure and short-term renewal; re-centralization of functions into central government; scale, synergies and a single point of contact; place-specific tailoring in place of uniform national delivery; and a single window to coordinate dispersed instruments. On planning practice, the cases converge on four effects: the removal of a regional strategic tier; the absorption of development functions into central or regional government; the consolidation of delivery into fewer bodies; and the creation of place-specific partners through a split or an upgrade. Two cases fall outside these four. In the United States, both agencies were proposed for elimination but not abolished. Japan is a revision of policy, not of an agency, and it shares the coordination concern found elsewhere.

Table 4, Case Analysis Matrix: overview of planning practice effects from regional development case studies.

The changes fall under five matters, and several countries share more than one.

• Politically, the decision came from government policy or a political commitment in England, Wales, Italy, France, the United States and Canada.
• Localism and devolution drove England and Wales, a centralising shift to the Presidency drove Italy, a presidential announcement drove France, and a federal-footprint policy drove the United States, so planning is steered more from the centre or the political program.
• Economically, austerity and spending reduction drove England, Spain’s Madrid and the United States, and planners lost a dedicated development body and rely on general programs or regional government.
• Structurally, duplication and fragmentation drove the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain’s Andalusia and Italy’s cohesion agency, leaving planners with a single counterpart but no specialised agency. Canada did the opposite and split agencies into place-specific partners.
• In funding, capital shortages and fragmented subsidies drove the Dutch investment bodies and Japan, and dedicated funding for new agencies drove Canada, so stable financial and legal footing became the condition for long-term programs.
• As for failure, the Italian Cassa ended through governance failure, short-term renewal, and a legislative lapse, and Japan’s first revitalisation decade did not reverse the concentration in Tokyo. Italy, the United States, and France share the political matter above all, since in each of them the planning system is exposed to central-government decisions.