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Regional science is a field of economics concerned with analytical approaches to problems that are related specifically to
regional In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as areas, zones, lands or territories, are portions of the Earth's surface that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and ...
and international issues. Topics in regional science include, but are not limited to location theory or spatial economics, location modeling, transportation, trade and migration flows, economic geography,
land use Land use is an umbrella term to describe what happens on a parcel of land. It concerns the benefits derived from using the land, and also the land management actions that humans carry out there. The following categories are used for land use: fo ...
and
urban development Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of peop ...
, inter-industry analysis such as input-output analysis, environmental and
ecological Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...
analysis,
resource management In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective development of an organization's resources when they are needed. Such resources may include the financial resources, inventory, human skills, production resources, or ...
, urban and regional
policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an or ...
analysis, and
spatial data analysis Spatial analysis is any of the formal techniques which study entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties, primarily used in Urban Design. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques using different analytic ap ...
. In the broadest sense, any social science analysis that has a spatial dimension is embraced by regional scientists.


Origins

Regional science was founded in the late 1940s when some
economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this ...
s began to become dissatisfied with the low level of regional
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
analysis and felt an urge to upgrade it. But even in this early era, the founders of regional science expected to catch the interest of people from a wide variety of disciplines. Regional science's formal roots date to the aggressive campaigns by Walter Isard and his supporters to promote the "objective" and "scientific" analysis of settlement, industrial location, and urban development. Isard targeted key universities and campaigned tirelessly. Accordingly, the
Regional Science Association The Regional Science Association International (RSAI) is a cluster of scholarly societies whose members engage in regional science Regional science is a field of economics concerned with analytical approaches to problems that are related spe ...
was founded in 1954, when the core group of scholars and practitioners held its first meetings independent from those initially held as sessions of the annual meetings of the American Economics Association. A reason for meeting independently undoubtedly was the group's desire to extend the new science beyond the rather restrictive world of economists and have natural scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, sociologists, political scientists, planners, and geographers join the club. Now called the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), it maintains subnational and international associations, journals, and a conference circuit (notably in North America, continental Europe,
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
, and
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
). Membership in the RSAI continues to grow.


Seminal publications

Topically speaking, regional science took off in the wake of Walter Christaller's book ''Die Zentralen Orte in Sűddeutschland'' (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1933; transl. ''Central Places in Southern Germany'', 1966), soon followed by
Tord Palander Tord Folkeson Palander (6 October 1902 – 1972) was a Swedish economist. His Ph.D. thesis, ''Beiträge zur Standortstheorie'' (Contributions to Location Theory), completed in 1935 at the Stockholm University College, laid foundations to regional ...
's (1935) ''Beiträge zur Standortstheorie''; August Lösch's ''Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft'' (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1940; 2nd rev. edit., 1944; transl. ''The Economics of Location'', 1954); and Edgar M. Hoover's two books--''Location Theory and the Shoe and Leather Industry'' (1938) and ''The Location of Economic Activity'' (1948). Other important early publications include: Edward H. Chamberlin's (1950) ''The Theory of Monopolistic Competition''; François Perroux's (1950) ''Economic Spaces: Theory and Application'';
Torsten Hägerstrand Torsten Hägerstrand (October 11, 1916, in Moheda – May 3, 2004, in Lund) was a Swedish geographer. He is known for his work on migration, cultural diffusion and time geography. A native and resident of Sweden, Hägerstrand was a professor ...
's (1953) ''Innovationsförloppet ur Korologisk Synpunkt''; Edgar S. Dunn's (1954)''The Location of Agricultural Production''; Martin J. Beckmann, C.B McGuire, and Clifford B. Winston's (1956) ''Studies in the Economics of Transportation''; Melvin L. Greenhut's (1956) ''Plant Location in Theory and Practice'';
Gunnar Myrdal Karl Gunnar Myrdal ( ; ; 6 December 1898 – 17 May 1987) was a Swedish economist and sociologist. In 1974, he received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Friedrich Hayek for "their pioneering work in the theory of money an ...
's (1957) ''Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions''; Albert O. Hirschman's (1958) ''The Strategy of Economic Development''; and
Claude Ponsard Claude Ponsard (1927–1990) was a French economist who worked in spatial economics and in the application of fuzzy set theory to economics. Bo Yuan and George J. Klir noted that Ponsard was a "pioneer who initiated the reformulation of economic ...
's (1958) ''Histoire des Théories Économiques Spatiales''. Nonetheless, Walter Isard's first book in 1956, ''Location and Space Economy'', apparently captured the imagination of many, and his third, ''Methods of Regional Analysis'', published in 1960, only sealed his position as the father of the field. As is typically the case, the above works were built on the shoulders of giants. Much of this predecessor work is documented well in Walter Isard's ''Location and Space Economy'' as well as Claude Ponsard's ''Histoire des Théorie Économique Spatiales''. Particularly important was the contribution by 19th century German economists to location theory. The early German hegemony more or less starts with
Johann Heinrich von Thünen Johann Heinrich von Thünen (24 June 1783 – 22 September 1850), sometimes spelled Thuenen, was a prominent nineteenth-century economist and a native of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, now in northern Germany. Even though he never held a professorial p ...
and runs through both
Wilhelm Launhardt Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Launhardt (7 April 1832 – 14 May 1918) was a German mathematician and economist. Launhardt was born in Hannover, the capital of the Kingdom of Hannover. He studied and taught at Hannover's technical school. Following ...
and Alfred Weber to Walter Christaller and August Lösch.


Core journals

If an academic discipline is identified by its journals, then technically regional science began in 1955 with the publication of the first volume of the ''Papers and Proceedings, Regional Science Association'' (now '' Papers in Regional Science'' published by
Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...
). In 1958, the '' Journal of Regional Science'' followed. Since the 1970s, the number of journals serving the field has exploded. Th
RSAI website
displays most of them. Most recently the journal '' Spatial Economic Analysis'' has been published by the RSAI British and Irish Section with the ''
Regional Studies Association The Regional Studies Association is a learned society with an international network of academics, policy makers and practitioner members. It was founded in 1965, following the foundation of the Regional Science Association in the USA and Internati ...
''. The latter is a separate and growing organisation involving economists, planners, geographers, political scientists, management academics, policymakers, and practitioners.


Academic programs

Walter Isard's efforts culminated in the creation of a few academic departments and several university-wide programs in regional science. At Walter Isard's suggestion, the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
started the Regional Science Department in 1956. It featured as its first graduate William Alonso and was looked upon by many to be the international academic leader for the field. Another important graduate and faculty member of the department is Masahisa Fujita. The core curriculum of this department was
microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and Theory of the firm, firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarcity, scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. M ...
, input-output analysis, location theory, and
statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...
. Faculty also taught courses in
mathematical programming Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...
, transportation economics, labor economics, energy and ecological policy modeling, spatial statistics, spatial interaction theory and models, benefit/cost analysis, urban and regional analysis, and economic development theory, among others. But the department's unusual multidisciplinary orientation undoubtedly encouraged its demise, and it lost its department status in 1993. With a few exceptions, such as
Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...
which awards graduate degrees in Regional Science and where Walter Isard had spent the rest of his life after UPENN, most practitioners hold positions in departments such as economics, geography,
civil engineering Civil engineering is a regulation and licensure in engineering, professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including public works such as roads ...
,
agricultural economics Agricultural economics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and fiber products. Agricultural economics began as a branch of economics that specif ...
, rural sociology, urban planning, public policy, or
demography Demography () is the statistical study of human populations: their size, composition (e.g., ethnic group, age), and how they change through the interplay of fertility (births), mortality (deaths), and migration. Demographic analysis examine ...
. The diversity of disciplines participating in regional science have helped make it one of the most interesting and fruitful fields of academic specialization, but it has also made it difficult to fit the many perspectives into a curriculum for an academic major. It is even difficult for authors to write regional science textbooks, since what is elementary knowledge for one discipline might be entirely novel for another.


Public policy impact

Part of the movement was, and continues to be, associated with the political and economic realities of the role of the local community. On any occasion where public policy is directed at the sub-national level, such as a city or group of counties, the methods of regional science can prove useful. Traditionally, regional science has provided policymakers with guidance on the following issues: :*Determinants of industrial location (both within the nation and region) :*Regional economic impact of the arrival or departure of a firm :*Determinants and patterns of intra-national and inter-national trade(commodity) and migration(people) flows :*Regional specialization and exchange :*Environmental impacts of social and economic change :*Geographic association of economic and social conditions By targeting federal resources to specific geographic areas the Kennedy administration realized that political favors could be bought. This is also evident in Europe and other places where local economic areas do not coincide with political boundaries. In the more current era of devolution knowledge about "local solutions to local problems" has driven much of the interest in regional science. Thus, there has been much political impetus to the growth of the discipline.


Developments after 1980

Regional science has enjoyed mixed fortunes since the 1980s. While it has gained a larger following among economists and public policy practitioners, the discipline has fallen out of favor among more radical and post-modernist geographers. In an apparent effort to secure a larger share of research funds, geographers had the
National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
's Geography and Regional Science Program renamed "Geography and Spatial Sciences".


New economic geography

In 1991,
Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American New Keynesian economics, New Keynesian economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He ...
, as a highly regarded international trade theorist, put out a call for economists to pay more attention to economic geography in a book entitled ''Geography and Trade'', focusing largely on the core regional science concept of agglomeration economies. Krugman's call renewed interest by economists in regional science and, perhaps more importantly, founded what some term the "new economic geography", which enjoys much common ground with regional science. Broadly trained "new economic geographers" combine quantitative work with other research techniques, for example at the
London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...
. The unification of Europe and the increased internationalization of the world's economic, social, and political realms has further induced interest in the study of regional, as opposed to national, phenomena. The new economic geography appears to have garnered more interest in Europe than in America where amenities, notably climate, have been found to better predict human location and re-location patterns, as emphasized in recent work by Mark Partridge. In 2008 Krugman won the
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (), commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Economics(), is an award in the field of economic sciences adminis ...
and his Prize Lecture has references both to work in regional science's location theory as well as economic's trade theory.


Criticisms

Today there are dwindling numbers of regional scientists from academic
planning Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. Some researchers regard the evolution of forethought - the cap ...
programs and mainstream
geography Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...
departments. Attacks on regional science's practitioners by radical critics began as early as the 1970s, notably David Harvey who believed it lacked social and political commitment. Regional science's founder, Walter Isard, never envisioned regional scientists would be political or planning activists. In fact, he suggested that they will seek to be sitting in front of a computer and surrounded by research assistants. Trevor J. Barnes suggests the decline of regional science practice among planners and geographers in North America could have been avoided. He says "It is unreflective, and consequently inured to change, because of a commitment to a God’s eye view. It is so convinced of its own rightness, of its Archimedean position, that it remained aloof and invariant, rather than being sensitive to its changing local context."Barnes in ''Canadian J of Reg. Sci''
1
However, such critics have failed to provide empirical evidence for their claims and ended up criticizing for the sake of criticizing.


See also

* Regional scientists (category) *
Economic geography Economic geography is the subfield of human geography that studies economic activity and factors affecting it. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topi ...
* Regional economics * List of planning journals * Regional development *
Regional planning Regional planning deals with the efficient placement of land-use activities, infrastructure, and settlement growth across a larger area of land than an individual city or town. Regional planning is related to urban planning as it relates land ...
*
Rural economics Rural economics is the study of rural economies. Rural economies include both agricultural and non-agricultural industries, so rural economics has broader concerns than agricultural economics which focus more on food systems. Rural development ...
*
Spatial planning Spatial planning mediates between the respective claims on space of the state, market, and community. In so doing, three different mechanisms of involving stakeholders, integrating sectoral policies and promoting development projects mark the th ...
* Unified settlement planning * Urban economics *
Urban planning Urban planning (also called city planning in some contexts) is the process of developing and designing land use and the built environment, including air, water, and the infrastructure passing into and out of urban areas, such as transportatio ...
* Walter Isard - founder of regional science *
Regional Studies Association The Regional Studies Association is a learned society with an international network of academics, policy makers and practitioner members. It was founded in 1965, following the foundation of the Regional Science Association in the USA and Internati ...


References


Further reading

* Boyce, David. (2004). A Short History of the Field of Regional Science. ''Papers in Regional Science.'', 83 pp. 31–57
Short history
(PDF) . Retrieved on 2011-06-04. * Durlauf, Steven N., and Lawrence E. Blume, ed. (2008). ''
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'' (2018), 3rd ed., is a twenty-volume reference work on economics published by Palgrave Macmillan. It contains around 3,000 entries, including many classic essays from the original Inglis Palgrave Dictio ...
'', 2nd Edition: :"new economic geography" by Anthony J. Venables
Abstract.
: "regional development, geography of" by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Gordon McCord
Abstract.
: "spatial economics" by Gilles Duranton
Abstract.
:"urban agglomeration" by William C. Strange
Abstract.
* Fujita, Masahisa, Paul Krugman, and Anthony Venables. (1999). ''The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions and International Trade'' (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT press). () * Fujita, Masahisa. (1989). ''Urban Economic Theory: Land Use and City Size'' (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). () * Fritsch, Michael und Mueller, Pamela (2006), The Effect of New Business Formation on Regional Development over Time. The Case of Germany, Discussion Papers on Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy, Jena * *

{{Authority control * Economic geography