Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi

The concept of spread is widely used in regional planning and is integral to the strategy of growth centres. In this paper the author attempts to define, analyse and clarify the concept. After a review of the classical antecedents of the concept, the formative statements of Myrdal, Hirschman and Hoselitz are discussed and compared. Elements of controversy are delineated. To assess the current state of knowledge, fourteen current works are systematically analysed along with the three formative studies. Separate analyses of theoretical, methodological and case-study-implementation approaches are followed by a discussion of a series of attributes of the selected studies. The role of diffusion in the spread concept is inspected and the spread-backwash dichotomy is critically assessed. In conclusion, the concept of spread is restated by specifying the processes which are elemental to spread and delineating factors which influence the extent of coreperiphery spatial relationships.