What about aging in regional science?

This paper is a revised version of a North American Regional Science Council Presidential Address delivered at the 57th North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International, Denver, Colorado, November 11, 2010. The question ‘What about aging in regional science?’ is posed and discussed from three perspectives. First, the aging of the corpus of practitioners of the multidisciplinary field is considered. Second, views are expressed about how, as each of us individually ages, participation in the temporal and spatial web of the regional science community helps to structure and impart meaning to our professional lives. Third, it is argued that age and aging deserve more attention as regional science research continues to advance. The implications of aging for research in the author’s specialty area of migration are discussed.     

Integrating the fragmented regional and subregional socioeconomic forecasting and analysis: a spatial regional econometric input–output framework

This study presents an integrated socioeconomic forecasting and analysis framework: a spatial regional econometric input?Coutput model and its application to the Chicago metropolitan area. The new framework is designed to overcome some limitations of existing models, particularly (1) limited consideration of population?Cemployment interactions and (2) dominance of top-down approach to vertical integration of regional and subregional variables. It captures local and lower level conditions and their effects on macroeconomic variables by using a modified disequilibrium adjustment model that incorporates subregional dynamics into a regional econometric input?Coutput model in a reciprocal, interactive manner, as opposed to a top-down allocation process. The framework also considers both region-wide and subregional level population?Cemployment interactions more systematically. It is demonstrated that the present model can support socioeconomic forecasting and a broad range of analyses, including the examinations of the macroeconomic impacts of local actions.     

What is western about western regional science?

After defining regional science as social science with a sense of place, I examine alternative speculations about the meaning of a western sense of place, concluding that it is about a relationship with a unique landscape, one characterized by extremes in climate and geology, great distances between places, and a colorful past of commodity extraction. But visions of this relationship with the landscape are in conflict. I then search for the western in western regional science by examining the residential location of members of the Western Regional Science Association (WRSA), and the place names (or lack thereof) in titles of conference papers, and conclude that the most western aspect of western regional science is the field trip or landscape tourism nature of the annual meeting. The paper ends with an appeal to expand the western sense of place in the WRSA.Based on a presidential address to the 35th annual meeting of the Western Regional Science Association, February 25–29, 1996, in Napa, California     

Transportation: Benign influence or an antidote to regional inequality?

In this paper a paradigm for the dynamics of long-run structural change in specialised and relatively nondiversified regions is presented. My claim is that the present deterioration in economic performance of these regions results from the limits of the model of industrial development that casts interregional transportation in the lead role. I argue that improved relative efficiency in interregional transportation may result in prohibitively high transportation costs in the long run, due to the absence of intermodal competition in the transport sector, the prevalence of highly specialised operations and an investment bias towards the original export sector. This will inhibit and indefinitely delay an economy's potential for a take off from a vicious circle and a boom and bust development. I outline further a conceptual approach to treating transportation costs and regional change by raising regional resource mobility via coordinated investments in intraregional transportation.     

Can regional policy affect firms' innovation potential in lagging regions?

The initiation of innovation in lagging regions has become one of the most pressing issues in regional policy. Several studies have attempted to identify the factors that influence the creation and development of product innovation in firms located in lagging regions. The identification of these factors could assist regional decision-makers in promoting technological innovation in such regions.  The research question investigated in this study is whether the effectiveness of such regional policies is related to the degree of regional innovation potential and innovativness. This paper tries to deal with this central question by implementing an extended empirical model developed by the author. The Extended Model combines two prevailing probability models: LOGIT and Bayesian decision theory.  The data analyzed in the paper were collected from a field survey of a sample of 211 industrial firms located in the northern region of Israel. In the first stage of the analysis, the model was used to identify variables influencing product innovation; the second stage investigates changes in the probability of producing innovations in the defined region. The results of the analyses point to the effectiveness of a regional policy that could promote and support the creation of factors fostering technological innovation in selected industries in lagging regions. Received: March 1998 / Accepted: July 1999     

From urban to regional planning in Latin America, 1920–50

Focusing upon a period during which the planning discipline emerged and was consolidated in Latin America from the 1920s through the 1950s, this article aims to identify some of the impulses behind the widening of the scope of planning activities undertaken by planners of capital cities, from the local and urban to the regional and territorial. The author uses a comparative perspective to analyze this tendency toward the enlargement of the territorial extent of the plan, interpreting it as part of the process through which Latin America’s urban modernization proceeded while also relating it to the epistemological and professional shift from urbanismo towards planificación and planejamento. While factors such as the emergence of planning offices in some capital cities and the emergence of the first courses in planning in university curricula are considered, the article focuses mainly on the the approaches of pioneers in Latin American planning to this transition, in particular Carlos Contreras and Hannes Meyer in Mexico City, Carlos della Paolera in Buenos Aires, Karl Brunner in Bogotá and Santiago de Chile, and Maurice Rotival in Caracas.     

How does industry specialization affect the efficiency of regional innovation systems?

This study analyzes the relationship between the specialization of a region in certain industries and the efficiency of the region in generating new knowledge. The efficiency measure is constructed by relating regional R&D input and output. An inversely u-shaped relationship is found between regional specialization and R&D efficiency, indicating the presence of externalities of both Marshall and Jacobs’ type. Further factors influencing efficiency are externalities resulting from high R&D intensity of the local private sector as well as knowledge from local public research institutions. The impact of both the specialization and the additional factors is, however, different for regions at different efficiency levels.     

Documenting regional science exceptionalism: what’s special about WRSA?

Although many regional science associations exist around the world, members of the Western Regional Science Association have long maintained that the WRSA is special. In an effort to measure this sentiment, a survey of the Western Regional Science Association’s membership was conducted in early 2011 in advance of the Association’s 50th anniversary conference. The survey prompted respondents for both quantitative information, in terms of number of meetings attended and basic socio-demographic characteristics, as well as more qualitative information, such as favorite meeting locations and meeting recollections. This paper provides an analysis of both the quantitative and narrative elements of the survey. In addition, it provides a profile of current membership, based on survey respondents. The results suggest that respondents do, indeed, view the WRSA as “special”, and that this sentiment is a result of both longstanding conference quality and an environment of collegiality and friendship. The paper closes with an assessment of potential future challenges to the Association’s “exceptionalism” and an expression of hopes for the next 50 years.     

Cultural and creative industries and regional diversification: Does size matter?

This paper aims at analysing how the presence of workers employed in cultural and creative industries (CCIs) is related to regional specialized diversification. From a theoretical perspective, CCIs drive economic development and local innovative capacity by facilitating processes of cross-fertilization of ideas. This study estimates an entry model analysing the ability of Italian provinces to successfully create new sectoral specializations. The results indicate that the relationship between the share of employees in CCIs and the probability of creating new sectoral specializations is non-linear, highlighting the need for CCIs-led policies to achieve a certain level of critical mass to be successful.     

Transport in regional science: The “death of distance” is premature

Transport costs have always been an important dimension in regional science. It is therefore remarkable that regional science and transport economics have developed in a rather unconnected way. Although being distinct, the routes of the two were parallel, and there are signs that the two fields will get closer to each other. This paper further discusses long run trends in transport costs and the potential spatial consequences. The main conclusion is that although in terms of money and time, the performance of transport has improved enormously, many economic activities have not become footloose to the extent as expressed by the notion of death of distance. One of the reasons discussed is the role of transaction costs, some being clearly related with distance.JEL Classification: R0, R4The authors thank the guest-editors and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

Creativity,education or what? On the measurement of regional human capital

This paper substantiates the debate following Richard Florida's suggestion to measure regional human capital by creative occupations rather than education. Consistent with Florida's notion of creativity, it suggests a microfoundation that relates creativity to workers’ cognitive and non‐cognitive skills. It shows that this microfoundation is similar to that of human capital in recent labour economics, which has facilitated important new insights. While the regional measures of creative occupations developed by Florida or others are too crude to make a difference, occupations may help project workers’ cognitive and non‐cognitive skills from the micro to the regional level.     

Stochastic key sector analysis: an application to a regional input–output framework

Limits on the precision of technical relationships within input–output frameworks have led to the use of stochastic analytical methods. The notion of stochastic analysis is developed in this paper to discern how the inherent imprecision effect, when aggregated data are utilised, affects the concomitant key sector analysis. Through a Monte Carlo based simulation, the stochastic key sector graph is introduced, with numerical expressions defined which quantify the association of the individual sectors to quadrants of the graph. The technical developments are benchmarked on a small problem, before a stochastic key sector analysis on an aggregated regional input–output table is reported. Comparisons are made between results when the aggregation of sectors is not employed. The paper reveals that aggregation in key sector analysis is inevitably a poor idea. However, it is argued that aggregation is often a practical necessity, so quantifying the uncertainty that is attendant on this aggregation is important, with the “association” expressions introduced potentially central to elucidate this uncertainty. The conclusions of this paper suggest that where analysts and decision makers are obliged to aggregate tables for analytical purposes then problems might be mitigated where marginal sectors are treated with care.     

What happened to Abu Dhabi’s urbanism? The question of regional integration

Neighbourhoods designed for Emirati citizens form more than 50% of Abu Dhabi’s urbanized land. As a result of planning strategies that neglect regionalism, these percentages are likely to grow in an unsustainable manner. This study traces these neighbourhoods’ morphological evolution towards the goal of identifying urban attributes that encourage cohesive growth. The analysis identifies three periods in Abu Dhabi’s neighbourhood morphology: the Inception Period (1967–1975), characterized by diversity, close-knit neighbourhoods, environmentally sensitive planning and integration with adjacent neighbourhoods and the city fabric; the Dispersion Period (1975–2007), characterized by fragmentation, massive expansion, parcel inflation and restricted integration with existing fabrics; and the Redemption Period (2007–present), characterized by nostalgic historicism, densification, parcel deflation and sparse regional integration. Neighbourhood typologies developed after the 1980s failed to conceive of physical planning at different scales. This failure led to a lack of environmental stewardship in efforts to meet citizens’ housing needs. Future development must take into account both cultural affinities and environmental effects and create effective compromises between these two priorities. Instead of relying on foreign experts, Abu Dhabi must involve local planners and academics in the construction of a new policy agenda that promotes the integration of different planning scales.     

How does City-cluster high-speed rail facilitate regional integration? Evidence from the Shanghai-Nanjing corridor

Most existing studies of high-speed rail (HSR) have paid attention to inter-regional trunk lines. This paper presents a case study of the City-Cluster HSR (C-HSR), a particular type of HSR line serving municipalities within a city-cluster (conceptually equivalent to a mega-city region in Europe or a mega-region in the United States context). The study investigated the effects of C-HSR on regional spatial reconfiguration along the corridor between Shanghai and Nanjing (namely the Hu-Ning Corridor) located in the Yangtze River Delta, China. In particular, the study attempted to answer the following questions: What role does the C-HSR play in city-cluster growth of the corridor? Does it increase regional integration or induce polarization? Three research steps are carried out: identifying the type of travel benefiting most from the C-HSR, describing the changing paradigm of city network structure in the corridor, and revealing the mechanism of the change. Based on the perspective of a “space of flows”, the passenger flows of Hu-Ning C-HSR in 2010 and 2015 were compared in terms of link intensity and aggregation intensity. The results show that the main service objects of C-HSR were secondary intermediate districts and their trips to urban districts in different municipalities. These trips provide the opportunity for potential sub-districts, especially those adjacent to regional core urban districts, to give rise to a horizontal and polycentric city network and promote regional integration. The competitive travel distance to other transits, reasonable travel time, and internal conditions are found to be the main C-HSR's effects. This ex-post study uses a combination of aggregated flows and individual movements, a perspective not yet applied to the regional level, to explain the process of reconstruction of the regional spatial system. Theoretically, the findings are conducive to illustrate this emerging spatial phenomenon and presenting hard evidence of the importance of short and medium HSR service in an advanced stage of urbanization. In practical terms, they have implications for regional planning policies on C-HSR station set up, regional land use layout, and industry distribution, and provide suggestions for C-HSR operation schemes.     

Sanierungsforschung in regional kontaminierten Aquiferen (SAFIRA) – 2. Projektüberblick und Pilotanlage

The joint research project SAFIRA, which is supported by the Federal Ministry of Science and Education (BMBF), deals with the development of innovative technologies for the in situ remediation of heavily contaminated groundwater at the in situ pilot facility in Bitterfeld. In order to evaluate the new promising technological approaches comprehensively, methodological tools are developed to comparatively address economical, ecological as well as a environmental issues of related remediation scenarios. The design period for innovative technologies can hardly be forecasted and/or its success be guaranteed. To prove a long-term stability as well as to reach a sound economical and ecological evaluation for new approaches an on site operation over extended periods of time is needed. Therefore a variety of technologies are tested and optimized simultaneously, in order to achieve a thorough comparison of technologies at the end of the project.     

Weighted convergence and regional growth in China: an alternative approach (1952–2008)

This paper analyses the convergence behaviour of labour productivity, capital intensity and TFP across 28 Chinese regions from 1952 to 2008 by using the dynamics of the distribution approach. Unlike other works, we take into account the population and economic size of each region in the analysis as well as the spatial dimension in the convergence process. Our results indicate that un-weighted analysis provide a limited information of the convergence behaviour, since the weighted analysis matter in that process. Besides, although the multimodality prevails in all the analysis made, we find that convergence in labour productivity is mainly driven by capital intensity. In addition, it is also observed two distinctive clubs in the distribution of TFP that may account for the different speed of regional development in China. These results suggest the need to promote further economic policies in the Chinese economy.     

The knowledge production–regional economic growth complex: a framework and topics for future research

This note presents an introduction and framework for the papers that make up the special issue. In addition, it makes some suggestions for future research.