Regional policy

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Contents
[hide]

 1 Regional policy in the European Union

 2 Regional policy in Italy
 3 Regional Policy in the United Kingdom
 4 Regional policy in the United States
 5 See also
 6 External links

[edit] Regional policy in the European Union

Main article: European Union Regional policy

Although the European Union is one of the richest parts of the world, there are large internal
disparities of income and opportunity between its regions. The May 2004 Enlargement,
followed by accession of Bulgaria and Romania in January 2007 has widened these gaps.
Regional policy transfers resources from richer to poorer regions.

The argument for regional policy is that it is both an instrument of financial solidarity and a
powerful force for economic integration.

[edit] Regional policy in Italy

The major Italian experience of regional policy is the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, set up in the
mid-1950s to foster economic development in southern Italy. Originally intended to last for
six months, it survived well into the 1980s.

New roads, irrigation projects and developments in infrastructure were built in an area where
local communities who had suffered seriously from poverty, de-population and high levels of
emigration. Tourism projects attempted to exploit Calabria’s beaches.

[edit] Regional Policy in the United Kingdom

UK regional policy was born during the economic depression of the 1930s, when heavy
industries in the north were devastated.

Assisted Areas were established, within which companies could acquire grants or capital
allowances - know as Regional Selective Assistance - in return for protecting jobs.
The overall pattern of policy changed little in the next forty years. Despite criticism by a
1970s Royal Commission that it was "Empiricism run mad; a game of hit and miss played
with more enthusiasm than success", governments of both parties maintained Assisted Areas.
It was not until the 1980s Thatcher government that regional policy was significantly rolled
back, with Assisted Areas substantially reduced in size.

Increasingly UK policy must operate within the EU regional policy framework, with its
strong injunctions against unfair competition (generally meaning state aid).

The post-1997 Labour administration reorganised regional policy, with RSA replaced by
Selective Finance for Investment in England Scotland

The article is about the geographic sense of the term. For other uses, including Regions and
Regional, see Region (disambiguation)

Region is most commonly a geographical term that is used in various ways among the
different branches of geography. In general, a region may be seen as a collection of smaller
units (as in "the New England states") or as one part of a larger whole (as in "the New
England region of the United States"). Regions can be defined by physical characteristics,
human characteristics, and functional characteristics. As a way of describing spatial areas, the
concept of regions is important and widely used among the many branches of geography,
each of which can describe areas in regional terms. For example, ecoregion is a term used in
environmental geography, cultural region in cultural geography, bioregion in biogeography,
and so on. The field of geography that studies regions themselves is called regional
geography.

In the fields of physical geography, ecology, biogeography, zoogeography, and

environmental geography, regions tend to be based on natural features such as ecosystems or
biotopes, biomes, drainage basins, mountain ranges, soil types.

Contents
[hide]

 1 World regions (global macro-regions)

 2 Palaeogeographic regions
 3 Historical regions
 4 Tourism region
 5 Natural resource regions
 6 Religious regions
 7 Political regions
o 7.1 Local administrative regions
 7.1.1 Regional Government in Connecticut
o 7.2 Administrative regions
o 7.3 Traditional or informal regions
 8 Geographical regions
o 8.1 Examples of geographical regions
 9 Functional region
  10 Military regions
 11 Air Training Corps
 12 See also
 13 References
 14 External links

[edit] World regions (global macro-regions)

It is hardly possible to think, talk, and write about the world without keeping some sort of its
spatial macro-division in mind. Major world regions are essential categories through which
our knowledge about the world is organized. Several different approaches to global macro-
regionalization exist. Conventional categories of continents are purposefully combined with
other global categories based on shared historical experiences and common socio-cultural
characteristics as well as with global political and economic divisions. In addition to many
context-specific approaches, one may also think about a complex sociogeographical regions
of the world - scheme usable for example for teaching world regional geography as well as
for several other organizational purposes. Obviously, categorising the world into a few spatial
units masks geographical complexity within these units and generates common identities
ascribed to their inhabitants. To a large extent, major world regions are mental constructs
created by considering selected features while disregarding others. For the large part, the
images of the world are derived from education (and the media) rather than from personal
experience. They are matter of memory and presentation and representation rather than own
perception.[1]

[edit] Palaeogeographic regions

Palaeogeography is the study of ancient geologic environments. Since the physical structures
of the Earth's surface have changed over geologic time, palaeogeographers have coined
various names for ancient regions that no longer exist, from very large regions such as the
supercontinents Rodinia, Pangaea, and Pannotia, to relatively small regions like Beringia.
Other examples include the Tethys Ocean and Ancylus Lake. Palaeogeographic continental
regions that include Laurentia, Proto-Laurasia, Laurasia, Euramerica (the "Old Red
Continent"), and Gondwana.The Paleogeographic region is also where paleontologist find
answers in history.

[edit] Historical regions

The field of historical geography involves the study of human history as it relates to places
and regions, or, inversely, the study of how places and regions have changed over time.

D. W. Meinig, a historical geographer of America, describes many historical regions in his

book The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. For
example, in identifying European "source regions" in early American colonization efforts, he
defines and describes the "Northwest European Atlantic Protestant Region", which includes
sub-regions such as the "Western Channel Community", which itself is made of sub-regions
such as the "English West Country" of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Dorset.
In describing historic regions of America, Meinig writes of "The Great Fishery" off the coast
of Newfoundland and New England, an oceanic region that includes the Grand Banks. He
rejects regions traditionally used in describing American history, like New France, "West
Indies", the Middle Colonies, and the individual colonies themselves (Province of Maryland,
for example). Instead he writes of "discrete colonization areas", which may be named after
colonies, but rarely adhere strictly to political boundaries. Historic regions of this type
Meinig writes about include "Greater New England" and its major sub-regions of
"Plymouth", "New Haven shores" (including parts of Long Island), "Rhode Island" (or
"Narragansett Bay"), "the Piscataqua", "Massachusetts Bay", "Connecticut Valley", and to a
lesser degree, regions in the sphere of influence of Greater New England, "Acadia" (Nova
Scotia), "Newfoundland and The Fishery/The Banks".

Other examples of historical regions include Iroquoia, Ohio Country, Illinois Country, and
Rupert's Land.

[edit] Tourism region

Main article: Tourism region

A tourism region is a geographical region that has been designated by a governmental

organization or tourism bureau as having common cultural or environmental characteristics.
These regions are often named after a geographical, former, or current administrative region
or may have a name created for tourism purposes. The names often evoke certain positive
qualities of the area and suggest a coherent tourism experience to visitors. Countries, states,
provinces, and other administrative regions are often carved up into tourism regions which, in
addition to drawing the attention of potential tourists, often provide tourists who are
otherwise unfamiliar with an area with a manageable number of attractive options.

Some of the more famous tourism regions based on historical or current administrative
regions include Tuscany[2] in Italy and Yucatán[3] in Mexico. Famous examples of regions
created by a government or tourism bureau include the United Kingdom's Lake District[4] and
California's Wine Country.[5] great plains region

[edit] Natural resource regions

Natural resources often occur in distinct regions. Natural resource regions can be a topic of
physical geography or environmental geography, but also have a strong element of human
geography and economic geography. A coal region, for example, is a physical or
geomorphological region, but its development and exploitation can make it into an economic
and a cultural region. Some examples of natural resource regions include the Rumaila Field,
the oil field that lies along the border or Iraq and Kuwait and played a role in the Gulf War;
the Coal Region of Pennsylvania, which is a historical region as well as a cultural, physical,
and natural resource region; the South Wales Coalfield, which like Pennsylvania's coal region
is a historical, cultural, and natural region; the Kuznetsk Basin, a similarly important coal
mining region in Russia; Kryvbas, the economic and iron ore mining region of Ukraine; and
the James Bay Project, a large region of Quebec where one of the largest hydroelectric
systems in the world has been developed.
[edit] Religious regions
Sometimes a region associated with a religion is given a name, like Christendom, a term with
medieval and renaissance connotations of Christianity as a sort of social and political polity.
The term Muslim world is sometimes used to refer to the region of the world where Islam is
dominant. These broad terms are very vague when used to describe regions.

Within some religions there are clearly defined regions. The Roman Catholic Church, the
Church of England, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and others, define ecclesiastical regions
with names such as diocese, eparchy, ecclesiastical provinces, and parish.

For example, the United States is divided into 32 Roman Catholic ecclesiastical provinces.
The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod is organized into 33 geographic "districts", which are
subdivided into "circuits" (the Atlantic District (LCMS), for example). The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints uses regions similar to dioceses and parishes, but uses terms like
ward and stake.

[edit] Political regions

In the field of political geography regions tend to be based on political units such as
sovereign states; subnational units such as provinces, counties, townships, territories, etc.;
and multinational groupings, including formally defined units such as the European Union,
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and NATO, as well as informally defined
regions such as the Third World, Western Europe, and the Middle East.

[edit] Local administrative regions

There are many relatively small regions based on local government agencies such as districts,
agencies, or regions. In general, they are all regions in the general sense of being bounded
spatial units. Examples include electoral districts such as Washington's 6th congressional
district and Tennessee's 1st congressional district; school districts such as Granite School
District and Los Angeles Unified School District; economic districts such as the Reedy Creek
Improvement District; metropolitan areas such as the Seattle metropolitan area, and
metropolitan districts such as the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater
Chicago, the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, the Metropolitan Police Service of
Greater London, as well as other local districts like the York Rural Sanitary District, the
Delaware River Port Authority, the Nassau County Soil and Water Conservation District, and
C-TRAN.

[edit] Regional Government in Connecticut

In the U.S. State of Connecticut the roles of county governments are d by regional
governments not abiding to the present county borders. Ever since the dissolution of county
government in Connecticut in 1960, the roles of regional services once provided by the
county are now provided by regional agencies of towns. Counties still are used in
Connecticut as geographical entities and in some counties they are still used to organize
judicial districts, also counties are still used to organize the state marshal system in
Connecticut. Counties were also used to organize the sheriff's department of each
Connecticut county until 2000, when county sheriff's were eliminated due to mismanagement
as was the reason for abolishing the county governments. An example of one former county
sheriff's department is the Fairfield County Sheriff's Department which served Fairfield
County in Connecticut. All sheriff's departments in Connecticut were not eliminated, only at
the county level. Several towns and cities in Connecticut still maintain a sheriff's department
such as Shelton with the Shelton Sheriff's Department.

[edit] Administrative regions

The word "region" is taken from the Latin regio, and a number of countries have borrowed
the term as the formal name for a type of subnational entity (e.g., the región, used in Chile).
In English, the word is also used as the conventional translation for equivalent terms in other
languages (e.g., the область (oblast), used in Russia alongside with a broader term регион).

The following countries use the term "region" (or its cognate) as the name of a type of
subnational administrative unit:

 Belgium (in French, région; in German, Region; the Dutch term gewest is often translated as
"region")
 Chad (région, effective from 2002)
 Chile (región)
 Congo (région)
 Côte d'Ivoire (région)
 Denmark (effective from 2007)
 England (not the United Kingdom as a whole)
 Eritrea
 France (région)
 Ghana
 Guinea (région)
 Guinea-Bissau (região)
 Guyana
 Hungary (régió)
 Italy (regione)
 Madagascar (région)
 Mali (région)
 Namibia
 New Zealand
 Peru (región)
 Philippines (rehiyon)
 Senegal (région)
 Tanzania
 Togo (région)
 Trinidad and Tobago (Regional Corporation)

The Canadian province of Québec also uses the "administrative region" (région
administrative).

Scotland had local government regions from 1975 to 1996.

In Spain the official name of the autonomous community of Murcia is Región de Murcia.
Also, some single-province autonomous communities such as Madrid use the term región
interchangeably with comunidad autónoma.
Two län (counties) in Sweden are officially called 'regions': Skåne and Västra Götaland, and
there is currently a controversial proposal to divide the rest of Sweden into large regions,
replacing the current counties.

The government of the Philippines uses the term "region" (in Filipino, rehiyon) when it's
necessary to group provinces, the primary administrative subdivision of the country. This is
also the case in Brazil which groups its primary administrative divisions (estados; "states")
into grandes regiões (greater regions) for statistical purposes, while Russia uses
экономические районы (economic regions) in a similar way, as does Romania and
Venezuela.

The government of Singapore makes use of the term "region" for its own administrative
purposes.

The following countries use an administrative subdivision conventionally referred to as a

region in English:

 Bulgaria, which uses the област (oblast)

 Russia, which uses the область (oblast')
 Ukraine, which uses the область (oblast')
 Slovakia (kraj)

China has five 自治区 (zìzhìqū) and two 特別行政區 (or 特别行政区; tèbiéxíngzhèngqū)
which are translated as "autonomous region" and "special administrative region",
respectively.

[edit] Traditional or informal regions

The traditional territorial divisions of some countries are also commonly rendered in English
as "regions". These informal divisions do not form the basis of the modern administrative
divisions of these countries, but still define and delimit local regional identity and sense of
belonging. Examples include:

 Finland
 Japan
 Korea
 Norway (landsdeler)
 Romania
 Slovakia

[edit] Geographical regions

A region can also be used for a geographical area; with this usage, there is an implied
distinctiveness about the area that defines it. Such a distinction is often made on the basis of a
historical, political, or cultural cohesiveness that separates the region from its neighbours.

Geographical regions can be found within a country (e.g., the Midlands, in England), or
transnationally (e.g., the Middle East).
Similarly, the United Nations Statistics Division has devised a scheme for classifying
macrogeographic regions (continents), continental subregions, and selected socioeconomic
groupings.

[edit] Examples of geographical regions

 Geographical regions in Serbia and Montenegro

 Historical regions of Central Europe
 Historical regions of the Balkan Peninsula
 List of regions in Australia
 List of regions of Canada
 List of regions in India
 List of regions of the United States
 List of traditional regions of Slovakia
 Regions of Brazil
 Regions of Asia
 Regions of Turkey

[edit] Functional region

A functional region or Nodal region, is a region that has a defined core that retains a specific
characteristic that diminishes outwards. To be considered a Functional region, at least one
form of spatial interaction must occur between the center and all other parts of the region. A
functional region is organized around a node or focal point with the surrounding areas linked
to that node by transportation systems, communication systems, or other economic
association involving such activities as manufacturing and retail trading. A typical functional
region is a metropolitan area (MA) as defined by the Bureau of Census. For example, the
New York MA is a functional region that covers parts of several states. It is linked by
commuting patterns, trade flows, television and radio broadcasts, newspapers, travel for
recreation and entertainment. Other functional regions include shopping regions centered on
malls or supermarkets, area served by branch banks, and ports and their hinterlands.[6]

[edit] Military regions

Chain of Command
 Unit Soldiers Commander

Fireteam 4 NCO

Squad/Section 8–13 Squad Leader

Platoon 26–55 Platoon Leader

Company 80–225 Captain/Major

Battalion 300–1,300 (Lieutenant) Colonel

Regiment/Brigad (Lieutenant) Colonel/

3,000–5,000
e Brigadier (General)

Division 10,000–15,000 Major General

Corps 20,000–45,000 Lieutenant General

Field army 80,000–200,000 General

Army group 400,000–1,000,000 Field Marshal

Army Region 1,000,000–3,000,000 Field Marshal

 Army theater 3,000,000–10,000,000 Field Marshal

See also: Military district

In military usage a region is shorthand for the name of a military formation larger than an
Army Group and smaller than an Army Theater or simply Theater. The full name of the
military formation is Army Region. The size of an Army Region can vary widely but is
generally somewhere between about 1 million and 3 million soldiers. Two or more Army
Regions could make up an Army Theater. An Army Region would typically be commanded
by a full General (US four stars), a Field Marshal or General of the Army (US five stars), or
Generalissimo (Soviet Union). Due to the large size of this formation, its use is rarely
employed. Some of the very few examples of an Army Region would be each of the Eastern,
Western, and southern (mostly in Italy) fronts in Europe during World War II. The military
map unit symbol for this echelon of formation (see Military organization and APP-6A)
consists of six Xs.

[edit] Air Training Corps

In the British Air Training Corps, a region is an administrative unit immediately above a
wing and is commanded by a RAFR group captain. There are six regions in the UK, each
consisting of six wings, commanded by an RAFVR(T) wing commander. The six regions are:

[edit] See also

 Regional development
 Regional geography
 Carl O. Sauer
 Regional state
 Region (Europe)
 Subregion
 DVD region

Regional development
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Regional development is the provision of aid and other assistance to regions which are less
economically developed. Regional development may be domestic or international in nature.
The implications and scope of regional development may therefore vary in accordance with
the definition of a region, and how the region and its boundaries are perceived internally and
externally.

[edit] Research Projects

 DEMOLOGOS
  URSPIC

[edit] See also

 Development
 Development aid
 International development
 Regional science
 Regional development agency UK
 The Globalized City
 Aid

[edit] Regional Development organizations

 European Inforegio Commission's Regional Policy Information
 UNCRD United Nations Centre for Regional Development
 OECD OECD Regional Competitiveness and Governance Division

Regional science
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Regional science is a field of the social sciences concerned with analytical approaches to
problems that are specifically urban, rural, or regional. Topics in regional science include, but
are not limited to location theory or spatial economics, location modeling, transportation,
migration analysis, land use and urban development, interindustry analysis, environmental
and ecological analysis, resource management, urban and regional policy analysis,
geographical information systems, and spatial data analysis. In the broadest sense, any social
science analysis that has a spatial dimension is embraced by regional scientists. For more
material on the foci of regional science, see, for example, the Web Book of Regional Science.

Contents
[hide]

 1 Origins
o 1.1 Seminal publications
o 1.2 Core journals
o 1.3 Academic programs
 2 Public policy impact
 3 Developments after 1980
o 3.1 New economic geography
o 3.2 Criticisms
 4 See also
 5 References
 6 Further reading
 7 External links
o 7.1 Organizations
o 7.2 Journals
 o 7.3 Other

[edit] Origins
Regional science was founded in the late 1940s when some economists began to become
dissatisfied with the low level of regional economic analysis and felt an urge to upgrade it.
But even in this early era, the founders of regional science expected to catch the interest of
people from a wide variety of disciplines. Regional science's formal roots date to the
aggressive campaigns by Walter Isard and his supporters to promote the "objective" and
"scientific" analysis of settlement, industrial location, and urban development. Isard targeted
key universities and campaigned tirelessly. Accordingly, the Regional Science Association
was founded in 1954, when the core group of scholars and practitioners held its first meetings
independent from those initially held as sessions of the annual meetings of the American
Economics Association.[1] A reason for meeting independently undoubtedly was the group's
desire to extend the new science beyond the rather restrictive world of economists and have
natural scientists, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, sociologists, political scientists,
planners, and geographers join the club.[2] Now called the Regional Science Association
International, it maintains subnational and international associations, journals, and a
conference circuit (notably in North America, continental Europe, Japan, and Korea).
Membership in the RSAI continues to grow.

[edit] Seminal publications

Topically speaking, regional science took off in the wake of Walter Christaller's book Die
Zentralen Orte in Sűddeutschland (published in 1933), soon followed by Tord Palander's
(1935) Beiträge zur Standortstheorie; and Edgar M. Hoover's two books--Location Theory
and the Shoe and Leather Industry (1938) and The Location of Economic Activity (1948).
Other important early publications include: Edward H. Chamberlin's (1950) The Theory of
Monopolistic Competition ; François Perroux's (1950) Economic Spaces: Theory and
Application; Torsten Hägerstrand's (1953) Innovationsförloppet ur Korologisk Synpunkt;
Edgar S. Dunn's (1954)The Location of Agricultural Production ; August Lösch's (1954)The
Economics of Location ; Martin J. Beckmann, C.B McGuire, and Clifford B. Winston's
(1956) Studies in the Economics of Transportation; Melvin L. Greenhut's (1956) Plant
Location in Theory and Practice; Gunnar Myrdal's (1957) Economic Theory and
Underdeveloped Regions; Albert O. Hirschman's (1958) The Strategy of Economic
Development; and Claude Ponsard's (1958) Histoire des Théorie Économique Spatiales.
Nonetheless, Walter Isard's first book in 1956, Location and Space Economy, apparently
captured the imagination of many, and his third, Methods of Regional Analysis, published in
1960, only sealed his position as the father of the field.

As is typically the case, the above works were built on the shoulders of giants. Much of this
predecessor work is documented well in Walter Isard's Location and Space Economy[3] as
well as Claude Ponsard's Histoire des Théorie Économique Spatiales.[4] Particularly important
was the contribution by 19th century German economists to location theory. The early
German hegemony more or less starts with Johann Heinrich von Thünen and runs through
both Wilhelm Launhardt and Alfred Weber to Walter Christaller and August Lösch.
[edit] Core journals

If an academic discipline is identified by its journals, then technically regional science began
in 1955 with the publication of the first volume of the Papers and Proceedings, Regional
Science Association (now Papers in Regional Science published by Springer Verlag). In
1958, the Journal of Regional Science followed.

Most recently the journal Spatial Economic Analysis has been published by the RSAi
British and Irish Section with the Regional Studies Association. The latter is a separate and
growing organisation invloving economists, planners, geographers, policy makers and
practitioners.[5]

[edit] Academic programs

Walter Isard's efforts culminated in the creation of a few academic departments and several
university-wide programs in regional science. At Walter Isard's suggestion, the University of
Pennsylvania started the Regional Science Department in 1956. It featured as its first
graduate William Alonso and was looked upon by many to be the international academic
leader for the field. Another important graduate and faculty member of the department is
Masahisa Fujita. The core curriculum of this department was microeconomics, input-output
analysis, location theory, and statistics. Faculty also taught courses in mathematical
programming, transportation economics, labor economics, energy and ecological policy
modeling, spatial statistics, spatial interaction theory and models, benefit/cost analysis, urban
and regional analysis, and economic development theory, among others. But the department's
unusual multidisciplinary orientation undoubtedly encouraged its demise, and it lost its
department status in 1993.[6]

With a few exceptions, such as Cornell University, which awards graduate degrees in
Regional Science,[7] most practitioners hold positions in departments such as economics,
geography, civil engineering, agricultural economics, rural sociology, urban planning, public
policy, or demography. The diversity of disciplines participating in regional science have
helped make it one of the most interesting and fruitful fields of academic specialization, but it
has also made it difficult to fit the many perspectives into a curriculum for an academic
major. It is even difficult for authors to write regional science textbooks, since what is
elementary knowledge for one discipline might be entirely novel for another.[8]

[edit] Public policy impact

Part of the movement was, and continues to be, associated with the political and economic
realities of the role of the local community. On any occasion where public policy is directed
at the sub-national level, such as a city or group of counties, the methods of regional science
can prove useful. Traditionally, regional science has provided policy makers with guidance
on issues such as:[9]

 The "determinants of industrial location (both within the nation and within the
region)."
 The "regional economic impact of the arrival or departure of a firm."
 The "determinants of internal migration patterns and land use change."
 "Regional specialization and exchange."
  "Environmental impacts of social and economic change."
 "Geographic association of economic and social conditions."

By targeting federal resources to specific geographic areas the Kennedy administration

realized that political favors could be bought. This is also evident in Europe and other places
where local economic areas do not coincide with political boundaries. In the more current era
of devolution knowledge about "local solutions to local problems" has driven much of the
interest in regional science. Thus, there has been much political impetus to the growth of the
discipline.

[edit] Developments after 1980

Regional Science has enjoyed mixed fortunes since the 1980s. While it has gained a larger
following among economists and public policy practitioners, the discipline has fallen out of
favor among more radical and Post-Modernist geographers. In an apparent effort to secure a
larger share of research funds, geographers had NSF's Geography and Regional Science
Program renamed Geography and Spatial Sciences Program. In this way, they hope to force
regional scientists, who had been obtaining larger and larger shares of NSF funds, to compete
for NSF funds through other programs.

[edit] New economic geography

In 1991, Paul Krugman, as a highly regarded international trade theorist, put out a call for
economists to pay more attention to economic geography in a book entitled Geography and
Trade, focussing largely on the core regional science concept of agglomeration economies.
Krugman's call renewed interest by economists in regional science and, perhaps more
importantly, founded what some term "the new economic geography," which enjoys much
common ground with regional science. Broadly-trained "new" economic geographers
combine quantitative work with other research techniques, for example at the London School
of Economics. The unification of Europe and the increased internationalization of the world's
economic, social, and political realms has further induced interest in the study of regional, as
opposed to national, phenomena. In 2008, Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in Economics.
His Prize Lecture [10] has references both to work in regional science's location theory as well
as economic's trade theory.

[edit] Criticisms

Today there are dwindling numbers of regional scientists from academic planning programs
and mainstream geography departments. Attacks on regional science's practitioners by radical
critics began as early as the 1970s, notably David Harvey who believed it lacked social and
political commitment. Regional science's founder, Walter Isard, never envisioned regional
scientists would be political or planning activitists. In fact, he suggested that they will seek to
be sitting in front of a computer and surrounded by research assistants. Trevor Barnes
suggests the decline of regional science practice among planners and geographers in North
America could have been avoided. He says "It is unreflective, and consequently inured to
change, because of a commitment to a God’s eye view. It is so convinced of its own
rightness, of its Archimedean position, that it remained aloof and invariant, rather than being
sensitive to its changing local context." [11]
[edit] See also
 Regional development
 Rural economics
 Urban economics
 Economic geography