Legislation in the Field of Regional Policy in Slovenia and an Analysis of its Spatial Impact

Abstract

In spite of its small size, Slovenia is marked by major regional differences. On one hand, there are devel-oped urban areas where the majority of economic activities are concentrated, and on the other, extensive rural areas are left to depopulation and the deterioration of the cultural landscape. In the desire to elim-inate these disparities, implementation of a regional policy was initiated at the beginning of the 1970's based on the polycentric development of cities and towns and on specific laws to stimulate regional devel-opment. The intention of this article is to describe these laws and evaluate them using a SWOT analysis.

Keywords

• regional policy
• regional development
• less developed regions
• demographically endangered areas