The paper undertakes a detailed examination of growth-pole strategies, an emphasis in regional economic planning during the 1960s which never lived up to its early promise. The initial concern is with the origins of the strategy, particularly the manner in which the work of Perroux (on dominance and economic space) became modified to form a normative concept in regional economic planning. Consideration is given to the various regional-problem settings in which the growth-pole strategy has been advocated. These settings reflected such policy concerns as depressed-area revival, the encouragement of regional deconcentration, the modification of a national urban system, the pursuit of interregional balance, etc. Attention then turns to the fundamental nature and underlying rationale of the strategy. The paper is continued in Part 2 which appears in the next issue of the journal.
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