摘要：Changing regional fortune is an old story. Staple booms, technological waves, backward areas, stagnating regions and politically driven regional cycles are among the sustainability themes explored by regional scientists. Until recently, the socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of northern European and North American regions was discussed within a context of widespread national and international growth. Consequently, regional development problems were viewed as localized phenomena. Natural resource depletion or unfavourable shifts in technologies or markets have, nonetheless, meant economic distress for the residents of many industrial regions. For other areas, for example the Canadian north or Pacific island economies, population growth and income expectations based on industrialized standards have created situations supportable only by continued injections of subsidies by larger polities. For most regions of the world, developed and undeveloped, residents have noticed with increasing alarm the pressure of lifestyles on their environment's assimilating capacity, resulting in declines in important, often crucial, resources.
