And What if Developing Growth Were in its Very Nature Ever-Emergent?

Abstract

The paper suggests a hypothesis that could shake up the theory as much as the practice of how territorial
development is understood. The author here holds that such development should be considered as an everburgeoning,
multi-sourced permanent coming-into-being or emerging as within any complex territory’s systematics.
The idea runs quite contrary to that present day practice as to development policy and planning
at any sub-national scale which is still grounded upon Lindblom’s focus upon unconnected or disjointed increase.
Were the hypothesis to get through the usual methodological filters, a call is urged for a radical retraining
of all and sundry in anyway involved in the afore-mentioned planning processes. It is here argued
that they would need to make themselves at home with systems theories, neuronal synapsis, with multi-fed
or synergetic concepts, with diffuse logic, with Time’s irreversible essence, with chaos and the all the rest
of that which underlies burgeoning properties. In the wake of these changes of approach, the author feels
that there would also be a need to thoroughly re-think bureaucratic structures and the way that the political
and technical institutions charged with territorial issues went about their business. The idea of developments,
it is here felt, needs to be reformulated taking complexity as the guiding paradigm for the task
and within a humanist and constructivist framework of reference.