A point of economic growth. Poles are usually urban locations, benefiting from agglomeration economies, and should spread prosperity from the core to the periphery. Planners have tried to create new growth poles; the best known being in the Mezzogiorno of Italy—which ‘signally failed’ (G.-J. Hospers 2004). Glasmeier (2002) PHG 26, 2 blames the rampant enthusiasm for growth poles in the USA for rationalizing and supporting concentrated investment in selected places, ‘while downplaying the underlying human needs found in adjacent poor places’. R. Capello and P. Nijkamp (2010) is very useful on this and other development strategies.