Integrated regional development planning: Linking urban centres and rural areas in Bolivia

Highly polarized settlement systems in developing countries reflect and tend to reinforce strong disparities in levels of development between the largest city and other regions and between urban centres and their hinterlands in rural regions. Integrated regional development planning seeks to create a more diffuse and articulated system of settlements in order to diversify the services and facilities available to rural residents, increase their access to town-based markets, new sources of agricultural inputs and non-agricultural employment opportunities, and to provide guidelines for sectoral investment and location decisions. One approach to integrated regional development planning — ‘Urban Functions in Rural Development’ - was tested in the Department of Potosi, Bolivia, and its results provide insights not only into the methodology of analysis but also into the complex relationships among rural development, patterns of human settlement and processes of spatial interaction.