Manfred Fisher, University of Vienna, Austria

Manfred M. Fischer is Professor Ordinarius of Economic Geography at the Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Vienna University of Economics and Business), and Adjunct Professor at the University of Vienna. He holds a Dr.rer. nat. degree (1975, summa cum  laude) in geography and mathematics from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen- Nuremberg  and  a Dr.habil. degree (1982) in human geography from the University of Vienna. He is one of the founding editors of the Springer book series on Advances in Spatial Science, and co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geographical Systems, a journal that bridges the work between regional science, quantitative geography and GIScience.

For about 35 years Manfred has been involved in the development and application of (mathematical and statistical) models, methods and techniques in regional science and related fields, a time period during which he has published 32 books, 110 papers in refereed journals and 115 book chapters and encyclopedia articles. In recognition of his academic achievements, he has been named a fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.

In relation to the theme of this newsletter, Manfred sees a great challenge for regional scientists to analyse, for example, some of the regional consequences of climate change. In doing so, one has to be aware that the coupled atmosphere- ocean general circulation models – the most powerful tools today for global climate simulation – still run at relatively coarse horizontal spatial resolutions (ca. 300 km). To get regional information from such models one has to rely on some regionalization technique. Such a technique essentially rests on two assumptions, namely, the ability of general atmosphere-ocean circulation models, first, to provide accurate climate features over the region of interest, and, second, to produce reliable “predictions” of the response of broad scale climatic features to changes in external events.

Given these assumptions, the analysis of regional consequences of climate change is characterized by high degrees of uncertainty. Standard approaches to modelling the economics of regional climate change – even those that purport to treat risk by Monte Carlo simulations – very likely fail to account adequately for the implications of large impacts with small probability. Indeed, climate change appears to be a problem characterized by Knight-uncertainty. That is to say, modelling regional impacts of climate change is a monumental exercise in which various subjective probabilities have to be assigned in the course of the analysis. A Bayesian framework appears to be most appropriate to move forward quickly and surely, and creatively enough to realize the potential now before us.

(Published on RSAI Newsletter 2011 June)

Ann Roell Markusen is Professor and Director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute. This year, she is serving as the UK Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art.

“My work explores the intersection between industries and occupations, on the one hand, and regions on the other. Using my industrial organization, economic development, and public finance complements to a regional economics training, I have delved deeply into these intersections using my own backyards (Michigan, Colorado, Washington DC, California, Chicago, New Jersey, and Minnesota) as laboratories. Often that grounding has helped me craft new theoretical perspectives–an industrial districts typology (the basis of my Alonso Prize), conceptualizing human capital and operationalizing it via occupations, and the case for a consumption base theory of regional development.

Bit by the policy bug thirty five years ago (Mike Teitz’s phrase), I have sought a real-world policy counterpart for my research, taking leaves from my Colorado, Berkeley and other jobs to serve full time at every level of government and frequently writing op eds and policy advocacy pieces in the New York Times, LA Times and  sim.

Real world policy exposure, forcing me to deal with things often assumed away, has greatly strengthened my work. I particularly loved the years I worked on the military industrial complex, crafting the intellectual case for the substantial 1990s peace dividend worldwide.

Recently I have been documenting the formation, regional distribution, migration, and economic impacts of artists, a highly mobile, innovative and high self-employment occupation.

Athletes form an interesting contrast– while both groups are targets of urban development policy, artists are more highly educated and are more apt to be rooted and re-spending in their current regions. There are stronger arguments and evidence for the catalytic role of artists than athletes, though arguably, the sports world has done a better job of creating opportunities for local participation and recruitment of future professionals.

I appreciate the colleagues I have worked and RSAI’s opportunities for presenting research and receiving feedback. Mike Teitz, Andy Isserman, Karen Polenske, and Peter Hall have been wonderful sounding-boards and collaborators in research, as have my former students Amy Glasmeier and many others. Roger Bolton, Bill Alonso, and Walter Isard have been great role models. I look forward to seeing many more women and minorities in our ranks and leadership.”

(Published on RSAI Newsletter 2010 November)

David Boyce is Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago, and Professor Emeritus of Transportation and Regional Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he served until 2003.

During the past 40 years, my research interests have narrowed and become more focused. I began my academic career with an interest in methods related to metropolitan land use and transportation planning generally, and long-range forecasting in particular.  I also had an interest in the impact of transportation infrastructure on urban travel and location behavior, drawing on my early training in statistical methods. During the same early period, I learned about convex optimization methods and their extensions for deriving and solving certain travel and location models. Since 1980, I mainly focused on formulation and implementation of integrated travel forecasting models that is models that represent in a consistent manner the various choices that urban travelers make: route, mode, destinations for work, shopping and recreation, and even location of their residences. Most recently, I have been working with a model of route choice for congested networks based on the user or selfish equilibrium principle. Presently, my principal activity is writing a book on the history of the field of urban travel forecasting.

From 1968 until 1989, I served in various leadership positions of RSAI, primarily related to organization of international conferences. In late 1997, I became the RSAI Archivist, succeeding Barclay Jones who established the RSAI Archives at Cornell University during the 1970s, and continued as Archivist until his death in 1997. The purpose of the RSAI Archives is to collect, organize and preserve materials pertaining to the founding, development and influence of the Regional Science Association International (correspondence, newsletters, conference programs and abstracts, financial reports, directories, etc.). From time to time, I also advise individual regional scientists about placing their research papers in appropriate archives, such as their university archives or local or regional historical societies. Finally, I contact and encourage regional scientists who have been active in RSAI to arrange for the preservation of documents related to our association’s activities. And occasionally, I succeed in doing so! If you are interested in such arrangements for your own papers, please do contact me at d- This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

(Published on RSAI Newsletter 2010 June)

Karen Polenske is Professor of Regional Political Economy and Planning at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Some of us have wondered why more U.S. and European women are not attracted to the sciences and engineering as well as economics, regional science, and other disciplines that require mathematics. Encouragement to do mathematics (and statistics) is needed early from parents and teachers while girls are still in grade school and high school. Often young girls are discouraged from taking it beyond the required subjects, although the use of the computer may be changing this. I never gave much thought as to taking or not taking mathematics when I was in high school. I enjoyed maths and also enjoyed teaching other students about how to do the problem sets.

In high school, when I took geometry, I was the only girl out of about 200 in my class who was still attending the mathematics class. I was planning to be an extension agent, and my teachers could not understand why I wanted to learn maths. In graduate school, I was part of the first class in the economics department at Harvard University where we had the option of taking either a language or a mathematics examination. Until then, graduates were only required to pass the language examination. I took the maths option.

Look at the early issues (before 1960) of The American Economic Review, and you will find that articles were mostly devoid of equations, and authors used tables only to review historical or current data descriptively. Times have changed. Mathematics is now a regular part of most economic and regional science articles. Also many women attend the regional science meetings. Most do not realize how few women attended the early meetings. I remember one meeting in Chicago many years ago where Anna Nagurney and I were the only women in a group of over 100 men. Now, many women attend the annual meetings, and we have a get-together each year at the meetings, so that we become much better acquainted with one another (see Maureen Kilkenny’s article below).

I definitely think that having  more women attend the meetings, becoming Fellows of the Regional Science Association International, and playing an active role in the Regional Science Association is a move in the right direction. I am not as sanguine about the current emphasis on mathematics and econometrics, partly because I see too many articles where the authors do not understand the underlying economic concerns – their focus on the econometrics often obscures the importance of the underlying issues.

(Published on RSAI Newsletter 2009 October)

Peter Nijkamp is professor in regional and urban economics and in economic geography at the VU University, Amsterdam. His main research interests cover plan evaluation, multicriteria analysis, regional and urban planning, transport systems analysis, mathematical modelling, technological innovation, and resource management. In the past years he has focused his research in particular on quantitative methods for policy analysis, as well as on behavioural analysis of economic agents. He has been visiting professor in many universities all over the world and he is past president of the European Regional Science Association and of the Regional Science Association International. In 2004 he received the Founder’s Medal. Peter comments:

‘Since its genesis in the 1950s, regional science has addressed over the successive decades social science issues related to regional and urban development. The methodologies deployed in regional science analyses have shown a wide variety of approaches ranging from policy evaluation to spatial econometrics, from spatial impact assessment to computable regional equilibrium model- ling, and so forth. The orientation in regional science was explicitly interdisciplinary in nature.

Interdisciplinary research has become rather fashionable in recent years, as it is generally believed that new scientific discoveries are most likely to be found as the interface or edge of different disciplines. From this perspective, regional science has a pioneering role to play in the future of the social sciences. It should also be added that regional science seeks its thematic orientation in the study of regions as concrete spatial entities which might be investigated from different perspectives. Thus, regional science offers a prism through which regions can be analyzed; it is not an omniscience in itself.

The Regional Science Association International (a few years ago) decided to create a system of ‘Fellows’ to honour scholars who have significantly contributed to papers in regional science research. In my view, an RSAI fellow is not in the first place an honoured scientist, but a scholar whose task it is to render services to the broader regional science community, in particular the younger generation.

From my early encounters with regional science - in the early 1970s – I have been fascinated by the wealth of approaches and news that are generated to better understand the ‘secrets’ of regions. Regional scientists form a scientific community of scholars who are fascinated by the undiscovered nature of modern regions and who are part of a discovery tour that will never come to an end. Regional science research is a discovery race without a finish’.

(Published on RSAI Newsletter 2009 March)

Building bridges in regional science

2025 conference participation support

The RSAI facilitates the participation of researchers from low-income and lower-middle-income economies (as defined by the World Bank: https://data.worldbank.org/about/country-and-lending-groups#Low_income) at the RSAI World Congress 2025, and the three largest Regional Science Conferences in 2025: PRSCO, ERSA and NARSC.

RSAI will provide a subsidy up to USD 500 (or the equivalent in other currencies) to selected researchers. This is likely to cover the conference registration fee and some local travel costs. Alternative means of financing will have to be sought for international travel and accommodation.

Only one author of a submitted paper presentation proposal can apply for a subsidy.

Interested researchers should upload a two-page CV plus a one-page motivation –including a budget with proposed sources of funding of the conference-related registration, travel and accommodation costs – within 30 days of receiving confirmation of the acceptance of the researcher’s abstract by the conference organizers.

Applicants should be regular members of the RSAI, and have had a paper accepted for presentation at the conference.

All applications, to be submitted at the following link:

https://forms.gle/G57Q983dAUK7aV9Z8

will be reviewed by the Committee and will have to be formally approved by the RSAI Council. Their decision will be final.

The North American Regional Science Council (NARSC) promotes the scholarly exchange of ideas and knowledge that apply to urban and regional phenomena in North America and across the globe.

The association fosters exchange across academic disciplines and builds on the understanding that urban and regional issues are best addressed by utilizing tools, methods, and theoretical frameworks specifically designed for regional analysis, as well as concepts, procedures, and analytical techniques of the various social and other sciences.

The association organizes an annual national conference that provides a forum for interaction and discussion, and sponsors scholarly regional science journals for the dissemination of research and ideas. NARSC is an objective, scientific body without political, social, financial, or nationalistic bias.

The Pacific Regional Science Conference Organisation (PRSCO) was established at the 7th Annual Meeting of the Western Regional Science Association (WRSA) in San Diego, February 1-4, 1968 at the initiative of representatives from WRSA and the Japan Section of the Regional Science Association (JSRSA). The first conference of PRSCO was held at the East-West Center, University of Hawaii, August 26-29, 1969. Subsequently, full conferences and smaller meetings have been held in many countries in the Pacific Rim area. A full international conference is held every second year and a smaller summer institute in alternate years.

The PRSCO is one of the 4 supra-regional associations of RSAI (Regional Science Association International) which is founded in 1954. The PRSCO enhances and facilitates exchange of research information in the field of regional science among members of Membership Sections of the PRSCO, as well as the exchange of this information in the Pacific Rim area between such members and other persons with an interest in regional science.

The PRSCO is a federation of the following affiliated sections/associations of the Regional Science Association International in the Pacific Rim Area. 

The European Regional Science Association (ERSA) is the supranational grouping of national regional science associations across Europe.

The main functions of ERSA, apart from promoting the field of regional science, are to organize an Annual European Congress, an Annual Summer School, the EPAINOS prize for young scientists and the ERSA European Prize in Regional Science to recognize outstanding regional scientists.

ERSA members are academics, policy professionals and researchers interested in spatial economics and planning, regional and local development and related issues. They are drawn largely from the disciplines of economics, geography and planning. There are presently 20 active associations (commonly named ’sections’), some, such as the German or French speaking sections, organized on linguistic groupings and covering more than one country. Constituent associations range in size from more than 700 members to 27. The largest sections have their own national professional organizers. In total, ERSA has some 3500 members in its constituent associations.

ERSA events have been growing in size and professionalism over the past 10 years. Attendance at Congresses has grown consistently over time, and more than 1000 delegates participated in the last three Congresses. The Summer Schools have been supported by the European Commission’s Marie Curie Program and the European Investment Bank Institute Program.

Rena Sivitanidou, Associate Professor at the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning, and Development passed away June 30, 2000, after a short illness. She is survived by her husband, Petros Sivitanides, her mother, and her brother and sister. Prof. Sivitanidou was an outstanding teacher, researcher and colleague. She holds the distinction of having won the Planning and Development Outstanding Teacher Award for every one of the 8 years she taught at USC, and her reputation for teaching excellence was recognized far beyond USC. Her contributions to the Master of Real Estate Development program centered on the magnificent way in which she taught market analysis. She also took great pride in teaching students of planning and development at all levels. Prof. Sivitanidou was passionate with helping us understand better the nature and dynamics of land rents. She has authored and published numerous papers on this topic, and her publications appeared in the top journals in the field. Her research is well known as being creative, rigorous and applicable to real estate development. She was a leading scholar in USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate. Rena Sivitanidou was a member of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA), Regional Science Association (RSA), Regional Science Association International (RSAI), and the American Real Estate Society (ARES). She was a highly respected colleague, and most of all, a good friend and mentor to large numbers of students. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.