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by referring to core-periphery phenomena, agriculture, urban systems, city size,
transportation, international trade, and industrial clustering. Their study forms a
good manifestation of the rigour of solid economic analysis for the explanation of
the spatial patterns and evolution of economic activity. The shadow side of this
study is that the authors have missed out significant parts of the rich history of
regional economics. Some examples may clarify this weakness in their study. First,
any exposition on agglomeration advantages ought to start off from the basic
economic principles laid down in growth pole, growth centre, or attraction pole
theories developed by scholars such as Boudeville, Perroux, Richardson, or
Klaassen. Now the topic begins with an anecdotal story on the geographical
concentration of second hand bookshops in St. Martins's Court in London, but
wasn't it Chamberlin who already before World War II pointed out similar phe-
nomena in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts? Furthermore, are there in
our modern times no agglomeration disadvantages? The history of regional science
offers many insightful and solid cornerstones for location principles.
A second example: the two pillars of regional economics are certainly formed by
agglomeration economies and generalized transportation costs. Much emphasis is
laid by the authors on the economic analysis of urbanization and scale advantages,
but less on transportation costs. In our era of ICT development where many
economists advocate the 'death of distance', it would have been necessary to pay
more attention to both psychological and virtual distance costs, and their
implications for the spatial organization of our world. The reference to Samuelson's
iceberg metaphor may be insufficient to explain the emergence of global urban
networks as a new geographical phenomenon.
And thirdly, there is no doubt a need for unifying principles, but the above study
misses out some relevant cornerstones of (applied) spatial price and equilibrium
theory, so convincingly and rigorously developed by regional economists such as
Takayama, Labys, Berliant, Nagurney, Hewings, or Oosterhaven. In addition, there
are also important contributions from spatial endogenous growth theory, recently
developed in the spirit of Romer and Lucas by spatial economists such as Br¨cker,
Button, Poot, Stough, and many others. Similarly, recent fundamental contributions
to spatial dynamics and complexity theory by Puu, Sonis, Reggiani, Camagni, and
many others would certainly have deserved more attention.
Finally, to call central place theory in the Christaller-L¨sch tradition at best a
classification scheme is a misconception of L¨sch' equilibrium theory and of the
wealth of literature which has been published ever since (L¨sch
1940
). A reference
to the fundamental regional and trade models of Tinbergen (
1964
) on the relevance
of hierarchical economic principles for spatial economic equilibrium would have
been appropriate in this context. Nevertheless, this study is an important milestone
in the history of regional science, as it aims to build a bridge to mainstream
economics. Indeed, regional science has over the past decades developed into a
full-fledged and rigorous scientific approach to the spatial economy. It has
immensely enriched our understanding of spatial complexities.
