Challenges in sustainable regional planning have been a hot topic of discussion in the past few decades. In this article, we analyze diff erent approaches to regional development planning and explore their relevance to achieving sustainability in the area, while emphasizing the importance of the bottom-up approach in regional planning. We performed a bibliometric analysis to detect the state of research of the regional development planning and examined the program of forming a system for ensuring a region’s sustainability. We concluded that it is crucial to create national development plans utilizing a regional approach, which involves local projects and programs that benefi t not just the economy and ecological state of the regions but also the inhabitants of those regions.