The Role of Environment in a Region's Sustainable Development

Mankind’s relationship with the environment has gone through several stages, starting with primitive times in which human beings lived in a state of symbiosis with nature, followed by a period of increasing mastery over nature up to industrial age, and culminating in the rapid material-intensive growth pattern of the twentieth century which adversely affected natural resources in many ways, thus becoming a serious impediment to further growth. The present paper outlines the changing role of environment in a region’s development, presents a measure of a region’s overall attractiveness and incorporates environmental factors into it.