industrial regions, and an exploitative approach to resource consumption
generally.
Growth pattern planning practice at the regional scale is seldom
‘all of a piece’; indeed, there are several component parts to macro
patterned development and conservancy. Always there exists a
number of overlapping ‘communities of concern within a region’
all supporting the general case for an ever-continuing embellish-
ment of raw data, an ever-refined calibration of the linkage
analyses, and an ever-assertive use of rural-urban analyses.
Macro-project ‘big-hit think-big’ projects are mostly out; policy
prognoses for value-adding ‘basic’ multiplier processes are in; as
is environmental conservation and social service provisioning.
Consequent to the discreteness of the information clusters and the
impermeability of much of the data, there arises a mix-and-share
data need. This reflects the inter-penetrating interests of indus-
trial and service establishments which contribute, with varying
proportions of embodiment, to ‘export’ and ‘residentiary’ pro-
duction, jobs and earnings.
This inter-penetration is elaborated by way of a parable in the box 4.2 construct
‘Export’ and ‘residentiary’, predicated on the basis of an agriculturally styled
notional region.^3 There can be no perfect net account, no truly economic or
ecological balance, every discrete goal being an augmentation of growth for the
subject region, preferably ahead of the national average growth rate as a
target, and striving to achieve a competitive imbalance of trade in the subject
region’s favour. Fiscal growth is not the be-all and end-all of course, for to be
‘sustainable’ development projects have also to be environmentally balanced
and socially uplifting. The important consideration is ‘progressive improvement
of the overall human condition’, and the operational thrust is a mixture of
emphases upon material growth retention, habitat equilibrium and social
wellbeing.
The most significant information-processing components for macro patterned
development planning and conservancy practice include: data assembly and raw
data analysis, linkage and pattern analyses, and rural-urban understanding.
Data assembly and raw data analysis
Ever-improved raw pattern data and base pattern analyses can be identified as
the operational core to getting quantitative programmes and projects up and
running.
Raw data assembly compiles information as fixed data about ‘stocks’
(urban-and-rural, firms-and-farms and so on); and flow information about ‘net-
works’ (transportation, telecommunications, media and so on). In another format
there is the appeal of the three-tier ‘layer cake’ developed by the McHarg
consortium:
Growth Pattern Management 125I worked with Victor
Bartels on several
southern Ghana regional
plans – 1968 through to
1972 – within that
nation’s administrative
boundaries. These, we
found, were overlapped
and interlaced with a
complexity of river
basins, the three-cities
‘Golden Triangle’, the
savannah and rainforest
zones, lowland and
upland districts, a line-
of-rail belt, the cocoa
belt, the tsetse fly zone,
and three ethnic tribal
areas.