Nations are struggling to find ways to create an environment where the tide rises for all regions. Governments are struggling with the concurrent pressures of globalisation and urbanisation, and the associated pressures on their provincial regions. Benefiting from a ''rising tide'' is easy to say and hard to achieve. You need to do something.
Regional disparities, or ''regional divergence'', is troubling economists and leaders alike worldwide. Not only are they struggling with inequality within and between nations, they are struggling with it between regions. Some do better than others. How then do you provide an equitable situation where all have an opportunity to flourish?
The standard neo-liberal economic argument proposes that, over time, investment will gravitate to areas where land and labour are cheaper leading to regional convergence – evening things up. What we now know is it's not that simple. Cities are growing and declining, provincial areas similarly, but also overall cities are growing faster, and some would say at the expense of, rural regions; especially if they are heavily dependent on agriculture.
The pressures of urbanisation and globalisation are no starker than in China where, for example, in Shanghai a population of peri-urban dwellers equivalent to the population of New Zealand, are waiting for a passport to move into Shanghai. The EU is similarly exercised by lagging rural regions and looking at ways to support them.