Friday, 28 May 2021 09:02

In Memoriam: Ian Masser 1937-2021

Not only does an obituary provide an event to celebrate achievements of a life but it also provides an excuse to recall amusing anecdotes that say as much about the person as any list of major accomplishments is able to do. Ian Masser was one whose dry sense of humour enabled him to tell great stories about his experiences and keep the listener listening. When he was appointed to the Chair of Planning in the Univers

ity of Utrecht in 1974, he recounted to me the tale of how he got his PhD. He said to me, and I summarise, that when the Chair was advertised, he reasoned that he would never get such a Chair in his own department in the University of Liverpool so he thought he would chance his arm and apply for the position in Utrecht. He said he knew the Chair had been designed for someone else but that someone else did not want the job and that is why he thought he might have a chance. A realist for all seasons was Ian. He was duly interviewed and offered the Chair. He then returned to Liverpool to begin his move. However a few weeks later, he received a letter asking him whether he had a PhD. He did not have one because in those far away days, many people in planning did not have such a qualification largely because planning was still a quite strongly professional subject area, so he replied saying he did not.

A few weeks went by and he received another letter asking him whether he could get one – a PhD, because in the Netherlands professors had some sort of higher degree, the particular form of which was lost on we British. And it was clear the authorities in the Netherlands didn’t understand the British University system either. In those days, there was no email and the telephones didn’t work that well and what complicated matters was that at every stage of the process of appointment, the position and the candidate had to be checked by the Palace in Amsterdam. The appointment had to be signed off by the Head of State. So as Ian recounted it to me, once a letter came to Liverpool, the reply was sent back to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands for approval. As Ian wryly joked, a messenger bearing the royal seal was involved at every stage, a soldier on horseback! When Ian received the letter more or less suggesting that he acquire a PhD, he replied saying he thought he could do so. This to most Brits was then truly amazing. In fact in only about 6 UK universities in those days, could you get a PhD by submission of publications and Liverpool was one such place. So he set about putting his publications together and binding them into a coherent bundle, submitting the material, which was duly examined, gaining the coveted degree. At this point, a year had elapsed from the time he had been offered the job but when he then took up his post, he found out that he was supposed to teach in Dutch by the time the year ended. In fact he painfully struggled with courses while his wife picked up the language in five minutes in the supermarket (Liverpudlian’s are great linguists!). I am sure the stories are apocryphal but Ian’s experience of getting a PhD later in life was not so unusual as this obituarist well knows. I did the same at Cardiff in the early 1980s although I had to go through the real motions and register formally. Ian of course was one of my external examiners.

There is much about Ian that I could tell you of his career but Peter Brown who has penned some personal reflections following this will say more. I first met Ian in the University of Manchester in the Department of Town and Country Planning in 1967 where a small workshop was being convened on new techniques in planning. Ian was then a Lecturer in Civic Design in the University of Liverpool and I a Studio Assistant with duties in project teaching Both of us however saw our main focus on the development of computer models of land use and transport which were taking the planning world by storm in the 1960s. This was the decade of the systems approach, the time when planning threw off its mantle of the bureaucracy that had fashioned a planning system based largely on aesthetic design to one which began to think of cities and their planning as systems to be controlled. Models were central to this focus and as soon as we met, Ian and myself became kindred spirits in the advance of this cause. In that year, he suggested that we offer a short course on what urban land use transport models could do and he set up a series of three evening talks in Liverpool in the School of Civic Design where we both laid out what this new focus was all about. He produced the lecture notes for this which gained quite wide circulation at the time. In fact he was the first to produce a small textbook called Analytical Models for Urban and Regional Planning (1972) that established the work of the group he was building up at Liverpool (and which has continued there in various guises ever since).

Ian’s research then began to move from models to data and he really spent the rest of his life dealing with data and spatial infrastructure to enable planners to use different data. He moved from Utrecht back to the Chair of Planning at Sheffield University in 1978 where he was Head of Department for some years. In the 1980s, he became increasingly interested in data, first becoming coordinator of the ERSC Regional Research Labs (RRLs) Initiative which then seamlessly morphed into the European Science Foundation GISDATA project (Geographic Information Systems + Data) which brought together a network of centres. He worked with Max Craglia on this project and although I did not know him so well at Sheffield – I moved to the US in 1990 – we collaborated between the SUNY-Buffalo site of the NCGIA I was directing there (the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis) and the ESRC’s RRL and then GISDATA projects. Ultimately this collaboration was to lead to the Vespucci summer school lectures held In Florence in the 2000s. On the back of GISDATA, Ian was responsible for forming the European network of GIS centres called AGILE and he was also instrumental in supporting the AGI in building a robust organisation. Peter Brown talks a little of this below but Ian moved back to Holland in 1998 to run the planni

It is easy to forget that Ian was first and foremost trained in planning at a time when our views about cities were not particularly abstract but nevertheless highly visual. His early papers in the Town Planning Review, the first of which was on village design in metropolitan hinterlands in 1965, indicate his broad perspective on planning and design. When we cooperated in the 1970s on papers, we both expected our work to be useful to planners, notwithstanding the enormous challenges in translating this kind of knowledge into planning practice. This was a central theme in Ian’s long standing contributions and I will remember his patience and perspicuity in dealing with the challenges of building a more scientific approach into how we need to make our cities more sustainable and liveable.ng school at ICT from which he retired in the early 2003. Ian spent a lot of time in his later years working with spatial data infrastructure producing an influential and cogent paper with Michael Wegener in 2016 in this journal “Brave New GIS Worlds Revisited”, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, Vol. 43(6), 1155–1161 which looked back 20 years to 1996 at which time GIS was focussing on spatial data infrastructure much of which has now been built. His last book Building European Spatial Data Infrastructures (Esri Press, 2015) as as good a summary of this perspective on the field of spatial infrastructure as you will find.

Michael Batty, University College London

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Wednesday, 26 May 2021 09:04

RSAI Newsletter (May 2021)

Dear RSAI members,

I hope this email finds you well.

I am writing you as the 13th World Congress just opened (yesterday) with an intense first day, packed with two excellent keynote lectures and 35 sessions, including both regular, national, and special ones. To this starter we are adding today a first dish with 40 more sessions, another much expected Keynote Speech, by Prof. Siqi Zheng (MIT), and a full day of Regional Science Avademy activities. I hope those of you who decided to join the congress will have as much interest in these events as I personally had throughout yesterday.

I am also happy to take the chance to send you the May 2021 issue of the RSAI newsletter (download), as usual skillfully edited by Prof. Martijn Smit (University of Utrecht). Martijn is seeking a second pair of eyes to help with both the gathering of contributions, and the proofreading of the final product. Applications from the global South or from those with a good range of contacts there would be particularly welcome, as would being a native speaker of English. Please contact Martijn at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. within Friday 23 July 2021 if you’re interested, enclosing a CV and a half-page statement of purpose, indicating why you feel you’re a good fit for editing the newsletter and how involved you have been and plan to be in RSAI and its activities.

To all members, a very fine day; and to the World Congress participants, best wishes of an interesting day, with lots of learning and interactions.

Kind regards,

Andrea Caragliu

Associate Professor of Regional and Urban Economics

Politecnico di Milano, ABC Department

RSAI Executive Director

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Thursday, 20 May 2021 14:55

New issue published - Revista Portuguesa de Estudos Regionais: 58 (2021)

It is a pleasure to inform you that the issue n. 58 (May 2021) of the journal Revista Portuguesa de Estudos Regionais / Portuguese Review of Regional Studies is now available online. You can accede to it using the following link:

http://www.apdr.pt/siteRPER/EN/revistaEN.html

Articles

The Recreational Value of Azibo Beaches: A Case Study in the Interior North of Portugal
João Oliveira Soares, Filipa Coutinho Soares

The Implementation of an Online Ticket Platform as a Cultural Management Strategy
Cidália Oliveira, Gonçalo Vieira Castro, Carmem Leal, Rui Silva

Dimensões da Universidade Empreendedora e o Seu Papel na Perceção de Competitividade Regional
Gonçalo Rodrigues Brás, Miguel Torres Preto, Ana Dias Daniel, Aurora Amélia Castro Teixeira

Impacto Económico do Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal na Região
Pedro Miguel de Jesus Calado Dominguinhos, Sandra Cristina Dias Nunes, Sandrina Berthault Moreira, Raquel Ferreira Pereira

Dificuldades da Gestão Urbana Integrada: O Caso do Parque das Nações na Perspetiva dos Utilizadores
Rita Ferreira Domingues, Paulo Castro Seixas, Ricardo Cunha Dias

O Contributo da Lei de Cotas na Redução das Desigualdades Sociais
Fernando Gonçalves, Susana Bernardino

O Estado da Bahia na Recessão: Uma Análise Shift-Share Multifatorial dos Municípios Entre 2014 e 2017
Thiago Henrique Carneiro Rios Lopes, Luiz Carlos de Santana Ribeiro

The North of Portugal and Galicia: Evidence of Agglomeration of Economic Activity
Vítor João Pereira Domingues Martinho, Jesyca Salgado Barandela

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Monday, 10 May 2021 15:27

Call for papers -Extended Deadline: 17th PRSCO Summer Institute

Call for papers - extended deadline

The 17th PRSCO Summer Institute

Online meeting, 11-13 August 2021, hosted by RMIT University Vietnam

https://www.rmit.edu.vn/17th-prsco-summer-institute

The deadline for full paper submission is extended by 21 June 2021.

Please find an attached file.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki Shibusawa

PRSCO Executive Secretary

www.prsco.info

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Tuesday, 04 May 2021 09:34

ERSA Monthly E-news - April 2021

3 May 2021 - Nr 3

Dear Members of ERSA, dear Colleagues,

We are happy to report that our Call for Abstracts and Papers for the ERSA2021 Congress resulted in an acknowledged success: 839 submissions received from 54 countries around the world! Preparations for the Congress are ongoing, the review process is about to start, a very attractive line-up of keynote speakers is currently being confirmed. As for the format of the event, live or digital, the decision will be taken by mid-May at the latest. One thing is sure, it will be another very rich and attractive programme.

Submitters will be personally informed of the decision and we post it on the Congress website as well.

With best wishes,

André Torre

ERSA President

Internal Communication

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS to the European Organising Committee

Dear Colleagues,

By the end of this year, five terms of office at the EOC will come to an end.

In order to fill up these vacancies, ERSA is looking for candidates who are eager to be involved and committed to the development of the association.

A balanced geographical representation, as well as representativeness in terms of professional experience and gender composition, will be taken into consideration. It is a 5-year renewable term.

Interested? Please contact the RSAI-ERSA Section(s) with which you are registered.

Looking forward to the applications.

André Torre, President and Rosella Nicolini, Secretary

Hot news

Events

ERSA Turkish Section reports on its Online Webinar 2021 of 28th April featuring " From The Perspectives Of Different Disciplines New Approaches In Regional Development: New Regionalism / Changing Regional Boundaries" It was aimed to discuss new regionalism approaches and country practices in the axis of the relationship between regional development and policy. An interdisciplinary participatory platform consisting of Urban and Regional Planning, Economics, Political Science and Public Administration Departments has been established.

The video on this webinar is available on Bölge Bilimi Türk Milli Komitesi - YouTube Channel .

2021 RSAI World Congress

Smart regions - Opportunities for sustainable development in the digital era,

25-28 May 2021│ Online

Due to the current pandemic, the Congress will be fully organised online.

Primary Programme to be issued shortly.

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Call for abstracts: Financing Urban Resilience through Land Value Capture

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