摘要：The six papers that comprise this symposium on"Regional Policy in North America" have their origins in a panel discussion which took place at the Twenty-Eighth North American Meeting of the Regional Science Association, held in Montreal in November 1981. This collection of papers has been assembled and published with two purposes in mind. The first is to elicit a comparative account of both the perceived nature of"regional problems" in the United States and Canada and the types of approaches that have been employed to deal with these problems. Such a cornparison is not only interesting from a detached academic perspective; from a policy viewpoint, the relative successes or failures of each nation should prove instructive to policymakers in both countries and elsewhere. Naturally, the results of anycomparison will only be valid ifinterpreted within thecontext of the respective institutional structures and policy environments. Second, and more generally, this symposium, through the juxtaposition of the views of a number of experienced regional analysts, is designed to identify and to stimulate the further discussion of a broad spectrum of regional policy issues.
