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have been a more appropriate description than 'regional science', but to avoid
confusion with the rapidly emerging space technology in the 1950s and 1960s—
addressing outer space studied by physical scientists and engineers—, the second
best choice was 'regional science' (even though Isard's seminal work on '
Location
and Space-Economy
' in 1956 still refers to space as the main scientific orientation).
The predominant agenda item of regional science research was to complement the
'
wonderland of no dimensions
' in conventional economics with a spatial plane.
Admittedly, this goal was already set earlier by German location theorists in the first
part of the twentieth century (for instance, Alfred Weber, August L¨sch, Andreas
Pred¨hl) and by predecessors in the nineteenth century (e.g. Johann-Heinrich von
Th¨nen).
The central feature of regional science however, was to provide a rigorous
analytical framework—often derived from mathematical theorizing—to connect
several social science disciplines with the goal to develop testable theoretical
structures and space-relevant concepts that were lending themselves to general
applicability.
An important methodological question is clearly whether 'space' adds only an
interesting geographical component to a given phenomenon (in terms of its
coordinates, e.g.) or whether space is an intrinsic object of study. In the first case,
cartographic mapping (e.g., geo-science, spatial information science) may bring
along new representational and exploratory scientific results. In the second case, the
notion of region, city, locality, connectivity or interaction is an essential ingredient
of spatial research. Such a spatial unit is the playing field for economic, social,
technological, institutional or regulatory forces. The history of regional science has
shown that both research orientations have been extremely fruitful and have led to
path-breaking findings, in which theory development and applied analysis were
running in tandem. In this way, also a bridge could be built between economics,
geography, demography, planning, political science and public administration. In
conclusion, a rich variety of real-world social science phenomena can be projected
into geographical space (thus avoiding that such phenomena collapse in one point),
but space is not only a passive attribute. There is an increasing awareness that
geographical space plays also an
active
role: it determines industrial location,
commuting patterns of residents, connectivity of cities, accessibility of inner cities,
transport and migration flows, and so forth (see also Coffey
2003
; Mulligan
2003
).
This endeavour has turned out to be very successful (see Isard
2003
). Regional
science conferences have become mass meetings of often more than 1,000
participants, the number and volume of regional science publications has shown a
rapid rise over the past decades, and regional science has become a respected
scientific approach, not in contrast to—but in tandem with—related disciplines,
such as regional economics, urban economics, geography, transportation science,
demography, planning, political science etc.
In the rich history of regional science various intriguing methodological research
questions have emerged that directly touched on the '
raison d'etre
' of regional
science. Examples are: What is a relevant spatial scale of analysis in regional
science? Should the focus of regional analysis be on geographic entities (e.g., cities,
