Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
7
German Roots of Regional Science
Johannes Br
¨
cker
Abstract
Walter Isard is the founder of the post-war tradition of Regional Science. He
dates the birth of this tradition back to 1944 when he became familiar with the
German literature on location. Based on these studies, he published his seminal
Quarterly Journal of Economics
paper
The General Theory of Location and
Space-Economy
and later his famous topic
Location and Space-Economy
. The
present paper reassesses the German contributions. Starting from von Th¨nen it
rushes through the history of thought until the 1930s of the last century. The
paper agrees with Isard's emphasis on the fundamental insights offered by the
German authors, but tries to revise some conventional wisdom about the German
tradition. In particular, it argues that the so-called historical school offers more
to learn from today than it is usually thought, while Weber, probably the most
celebrated German spatial economist after von Th¨nen, chose a methodological
approach that turned out not to be fruitful for later research. Finally, the paper
explicitly dissents from Isard's praise of Weigmann who, for good reasons, is
now completely forgotten.
7.1
Introduction
Walter Isard is the founder of the post-war tradition of Regional Science. He dates
the birth of this tradition back to 1944 when, as a conscientious objector to military
service, he was assigned to Civilian Public Service in a hospital and spent his time
at night, when the patients happened to be asleep “
...
to translate into English the
J. Br¨cker (
)
Institute for Regional Research, Christian-Albrechts-Universit¨t zu Kiel, Olshausenstr. 40,
24098 Kiel, Germany
Department of Economics, Christian-Albrechts-Universit¨t zu Kiel, Olshausenstr. 40,
24098 Kiel, Germany
e-mail:
broecker@economics.uni-kiel.de
*
