The first fifty years of the Western Regional Science Association: the making of the WRSA brand

In 1954 the Regional Science Association held its first conference in Detroit, Michigan. Seven years later, in 1961, the Western Regional Science Association was founded as one of the four United States-based sections (the Northeastern, the Southern, the Mid-Continent, and the Western). In the 50 years since its founding, the WRSA has met its obligation to promote regional science in Western North America and has gone beyond that initial mandate to promote regional science internationally and to become an association that truly delivers on the somewhat whimsical motto: “The way academic life should be.” In this paper, coauthored by the Association’s three long-term Executive Secretaries, W. W. Rostow’s model of the stages for economic advancement is employed, by analogy, to interpret the historical development of the Western Regional Science Association—and of its distinctive “brand”—over its first half century.