Regional change refers to both the intentional and unintentional processes that shape the form, function, and outcomes of social, biological and physical systems on a regional scale.

Regional change may be called regionalization, which “is a process whereby something is done to regions and is often top-down, centralizing and technocratic.”  Examples of this process can be seen in global institutions and processes, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),  which reorganize places, people, and processes around regions that are sometimes larger and sometimes smaller than a national scale.

While regionalization may be a “top-down” process essentially forced upon regions, regionalism “refers to an ideology and to political movements which demand greater control over the affairs of the regional territory by the people residing in that territory, usually by means of installation of a regional government. It is essentially bottom-up, decentralizing (of political power), and political.”  (More on regionalism can be seen in the section on “What is regional planning and action?”)

Some argue that these distinctions between regionalization and regionalism as “top-down” and “bottom-up” may be inadequate, since the two occur in relation to each other.  Perhaps, the two may be thought of as a two-pronged process of “rescaling the state”  in which political and economic action are reorganized around scales that are larger or smaller than that of the nation. Regionalization and regionalism both help to contribute to regional change and the unique development that regions experience over time.  

References

Jonas, Andrew E.G. and Stephanie Pincetl. 2006. “Rescaling Regions in the State: The New Regionalism in California.” Political Geography 25:482-505.

Keating, Michael and John Loughlin. 1997. “Introduction.” Pp. 1-13 in The Political Economy of Regionalism, edited by M. Keating and J. Loughlin. Portland, OR: Frank Crass.

Larner, Wendy and William Walters. 2002. “The Political Rationality of ‘New Regionalism’: Toward a Genealogy of the Region.” Theory and Society 31(3): 391-432.

Walker, Richard A. 2001. “California’s Golden Road to Riches: Natural Resources and Regional Capitalism, 1848-1940.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(1): 167-199.