The genesis and evolution of the blue banana region

This article aims to present a balanced bibliographic review on the genesis of the Blue Banana and its further developments. Different contributions have been collected to obtain a comprehensive picture of the European regional concept from both historical and theoretical perspectives. Besides the review of the literature, this article contributes to the existing research on the Blue Banana with a comprehensive investigation of its current features, including urbanization, infrastructures, labor market, productivity, and competitiveness. These aspects raise significant implications at the EU level in terms of promoting policies aimed at the reduction of disparities among the European regions, whose development strate-gies could be further scrutinized, thus benefiting the continent as a whole. [Publisher's text]