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settlements, industrial complexes, regions, interregional trade or transport) or on
the behaviour of the economic objects in a concrete and given geographical space?
If spatial movements and interactions take time, what is the relationship between
space and time? If all spatial phenomena are linked together—but nearby things
more than distant things [the so-called Law of Tobler ( 1970 )],—what are then the
essential spatial connectivity (interaction or communication) principles? If a given
geographic space acts as both a barrier and an opportunity, what does this mean for
our explanatory analysis? And how are modern concepts from networks and
complexity related to regional dynamics? Such questions do not have easily
available answers. And therefore, the present paper has a modest scope: its aim is
to seek for an operational framework for understanding the multiple and mutually
interwoven dimensions of the structure and evolution of regional and urban phe-
nomena as well as their interactions, in particular behavioural spatial patterns and
governance modes.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2.2 will offer a concise and selective
description of some key issues in regional science. This will be followed by the
design of a systemic conceptual framework for analyzing regional phenomena,
based on a so-called Triple-Layer representation. Then, Sect. 2.4 will be devoted to
a holistic perspective on the spatial economy, including space-time complexity
issues. The paper will conclude with retrospective and prospective remarks.
2.2
Positioning Regional Science
Regional science originates from both economics and geography . On the economic
side, its early roots can already be found in labour specialization and spatial labour
division, in industrial organization and spatial industrial concentration, and in
international trade and interregional transport [see for a review, Paelinck and
Nijkamp ( 1980 ) and Ponsard ( 1983 )]. Early predecessors were—next to classical
economists—amongst others Johann-Heinrich von Th ¨ nen, Alfred Weber, Tord
Palander, August L¨sch and Andreas Pred¨hl.
Regional science finds its origin also in geography, in particular economic
geography. The latter discipline derives its name from Emile Levassseur (1828-
1911), a French economist and geographer (see Boureille 1998 ; Leroux and Hart
2012 ). Economic geography studies the spatial distribution of individual and
economic activities—and their interdependencies—at various geographic scales,
and their evolution over time (see Knox and Marston 2001 ; Clark et al. 2003 ; Warf
2006 ). Seminal contributions from economic geography to the foundations of
regional science were inter alia provided by Walter Christaller, with his path-
breaking conceptualization of the hierarchical distribution of places. Seminal
contribution can be found in Isard ( 1956 , 1979 ).
Regional science offers essentially a multidisciplinary perspective on the inter-
face of both economics and economic geography. Regional science—sometimes
also coined spatial science or spatial economics—studies the where, what, how and
for whom questions in a complex space-economy. In so doing, it also employs
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