1. Theoretical research and policy use of the concept have been more intense in Europe, where it originated. They have, however, made inroads in America. In Latin America, the journal Cuadernos de la Sociedad Venezonala de Planificacion, under the leadership of Eduardo Neira, has been the carrier of most of the relevant literature; policy acceptance of the concept has been widespread. In the U.S., J. P. Friedmann (see, for example, Regional Development and Planning FriedmannAlonsoM.I.T.1964and N. M. Hansen (see his papers later quoted in 35) among others, have made available to the professional audience the European concepts. Hansen is trying to use the approach in the development of Appalachia. J. P. Friedmann has made several attempts to give an analytical explanation to the core region concept. I do not deal with his interesting contribution because I restrict my concern to the area delineated by Perroux.
2. Boudeville, J.R.(1968) L'espace et les pôles de croissance. Paris Avant-propos, p. 1—claims that most of theory and policy evolved has been the result of the French school.
3. Perroux, F.(1955) Note sur la notion de Pôle de Croissance. In Economie Appliquée. . in
4. Perroux, F.(1961) La firme motrice dans la région et la région motrice. In Théorie et Politique de l'Expansion Régionale. . Brussels It is a largely intuitive idea, of great appeal and acceptance. Since it has not been defined, hardly sketched, it is useful for both the followers of Hirschman and Myrdal: the idea, in fact, is almost as essential to those who believe in the initial inexorability of the agglomeration factors, and in their eventual transformation into depolarising factors, as to those who maintain that, since the change in the behaviour of the factors is not sure (or too remote) and they are not inexorable, polarisations have to be fought against. In other words, the idea fulfils the role of providing an accepted intellectual battleground. Under its umbrella an interchange of contradictory hypothetical information takes place. It is in this sense that I have used the term ‘idea in good currency’, borrowing it from D. A. Schon's communication to the HUD Summer Study in Berkeley, 1968.
5. F. Perroux has been one of the few leading French economists familiar with the German sources. Specifically, before he helped to introduce Keynesian economics in France, he was critically important in diffusing Schumpeter's thought. See his ‘La pensée économique de Joseph Schumpeter’, introduction to the French translation of Theorie der Wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung Paris1935