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This paper gives an overview of models which can be used to analyse regional development as well as to design policies and strategies for the future of regions and localities. It evaluates the analytical and policy relevance of these models, and offers some recommendations for a more structural realist approach to spatial development analysis.Section 1 provides an overview of Territorial Innovation Models (TIM) – models theorising local and regional development from a New Regionalism point of view - and explains why they fall short of “realist” regional development analysis, strategy and policy design. Section 2 then makes a plea for a return to the “old” institutionalist and structuralist tradition of regional development analysis (German Historical School, Gunnar Myrdal, François Perroux, Alain Lipietz, etc.). Indeed these approaches are more ad rem to distinguishing the analytical from the strategy and policy perspective of regional development, and could be made appropriate for spatial analysis relatively easily in this era of globalization. Section 3 makes some methodological recommendations, focusing on contemporary spatial development analysis within a framework of integrated regulationist, cultural political economy and network theoretical approaches, and taking full cognisance of the structural-institutional, scalar and cultural dimensions of development processes and strategies.