European regional policy and development : forgotten regions and spaces The shortcomings of traditional regional policies led to a major policy. Thus regions have become more active in the design and implementation of policies following a bottom up approach involving the participation of the local community in strategic planning as opposed to the traditional top down method. This book addresses regional development theories and policies with a special focus on forgotten places and raises emerging questions about recent theoretical advances as well as trends and challenges in the field. It examines two main and related issues: the crucial role of regional actors for development and the role of forgotten spaces. It emphasizes the spatial territorial approaches from different theoretical perspectives underlining place based approaches and compares the experiences of both successful and failed cases attempting to identify lessons and policy recommendations as well as adding empirical evidence to this field. The different cases presented which focus on forgotten spaces allow the reader to assess the role of different actors for regional development as well as some sectoral approaches. While there is a clear focus on European countries with different geographical institutional and sociocultural characteristics the book also examines good and bad examples of regional development and policies relating to forgotten places from different regions worldwide including developed and developing countries. The book benefits from contributions from over twenty authors from different nationalities and a rich diversity of case studies approaches and methods of discussion. The authors discuss practical examples and more complex theoretical approaches involving techniques of spatial analysis spatial econometrics social networks content analysis as well as regional planning techniques. The book will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience and will provide academicians politicians and policy designers with original and detailed analyses.