Regional Science
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL MEASUREMENT

Darla K. Munroe
University of North Carolina – Charlotte
James J. Biles
Western Michigan University

 
INTRODUCTION

The advent of regional science in the 1950s sought to forge a dynamic framework for regional analysis. Unlike its neighbors in geography and economics, regional science explicitly recognized that all economic processes exist in space as well as time. An important point of departure is the attempt to link broad-scale, or regional, patterns to underlying social and economic processes. Traditionally, regions have been defined on the basis of some social, economic or physical characteristic, drawing on the concept of nodality – a functional relationship between the city and its hinterlands, or based on administrative or political boundaries (Malecki, 1991). Notwithstanding these apparently clear-cut definitions, the regional concept becomes murky because it has been applied at a variety of spatial scales, from the very local to the international. In addition, regional boundaries are not static –they may depend on the research problem in question and they may change over time (Openshaw, 1983).

This chapter provides an introductory review of methods commonly used in the field of regional science, as well as their potential applications. To frame this discussion, we draw from a recent assessment of publication patterns within the discipline (Rey and Anselin 2000), and elaborate on those fields and sub-areas within which regional science has made and continues to make the greatest impact, in theory, in practice and in policy. Some of the methods and approaches discussed in this chapter are covered in greater length in other chapters in this volume, in which case the reader is referred to those sections for further examination.