Regional Science: Retrospect and Prospect

Regional science, as an integrating discipline for many scientific analyses concerning the element of space, has a remarkable record of achievements in both breadth and depth. The great many scientific journals in this field and the large number of regional science books mirror the appeal of this discipline, in both the developed and the developing world. The scientific organization in this area, the Regional Science Association International, is organizing a world conference every four years. The 1989 Regional Science World Conference was held in an interesting setting, viz. kibbutz Ramat Rachel on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The organization of this meeting was undertaken by the Israeli Section of the Regional Science Association, under the supervision of Professor Rafi Bar-EI (Development Study Center, Rehovoth). The meeting turned out to be a great success and provided an extremely interesting cross-section of new developments in the area of regional science. It was decided afterward to publish a set of representative papers from this meeting in one volume. The present book brings together these papers, which were duly selected after a careful screening and refereeing process. The editors wish to thank all referees for their willingness to assist them in the task of producing this volume. Many thanks also go to Rita Hittema for her skillful copy-editing and word- processing of the manuscript.

This book contains a systematized set of contributions to the understanding of regional systems. It has partly a review and partly an exploratory nature. Major research areas dealt with are: spatial patterns of households and firms; spatial impacts of new technologies; economic restructuring and spatial dynamics; new analytical methods and models.

This book provides a retrospective and prospective view of regional science. The state of the art in the field of regional science is described in a concise synthesis, followed by descriptions of four major core areas which may be seen as most characteristic and promising research fields now being explored. These four fields are: - spatial patterns of households and firms, with a par- ticular view on locational decisions, analytical tools and policy implications; - spatial impacts of new technologies, with a particular view on spatial dynamics; - economic restructuring and spatial dynamics, includ- ing changes in settlement systems and policy issues; - new analytical methods and models in regional science. Each of these fields is dealt with in a systematic description of new operational research directions, together with contributions, partly of a survey character and partly of an exploratory or creative nature. In summary, the book provides a broad spectrum of recent contributions to the increasingly popular field of regional science.