2024 RSAI World Congress | Request for Proposals

The Regional Science Association International (RSAI) aims to hold a world congress at least once every two years. Unfortunately, the last congress – in Marrakech in 2020 – had to be postponed to 2021, and held online, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. RSAI considers world congresses an important instrument for furthering its mission of global advancement of regional analysis and related spatial and areal studies for the benefit of society.

The RSAI calls for proposals to host a world congress in 2024. Potential hosts are RSAI Supra-Regionals, Sections or Members that have a proven track record of hosting conferences and related events. A world congress may be held concurrently with another event or as a standalone event. Proposals must be submitted from May 1, 2023, and within Thursday, June 1, 2023, 23:59 CET.  Proposals are evaluated by the RSAI Council. A decision will be made at the RSAI Council meeting to be held in Cambodia, during the PRSCO summer institute; depending on the quality of the proposals received, the RSAI reserves the right not to organize a congress in 2024, or to propose the organization for a subsequent year. This document outlines the application process, organization and expected outcomes regarding the 2024 world congress.

Prior RSAI World congresses

Criteria for a successful 2024 world congress

1. The world congress should aim to have significant participation from members of Sections of all four supra-regional organisations – ERSA, LARSA, NARSC and PRSCO.
2. The conference should also endeavor to attract regional scientists resident in countries in which no RSAI Section has yet been established. Subsidies may be available to selected applicants for participation through RSAI’s “Building Bridges” programme.
3. The 2024 World Congress may be held as a standalone event. Alternatively, proposals may suggest to organise it jointly or “back-to-back” with another event. Such a joint or back-to-back event could be an RSAI Section meeting, a supra-regional congress, or an event held jointly with other organizations with similar objectives or networks.
4. The proposed dates of the congress must be such that they do not clash with other events that aim to attract the same regional science community, unless a joint conference is envisaged. The organizers will consult with the RSAI President and the RSAI executive Director in order to identify a mutually acceptable schedule for the event.
5. The conference should be held at an easily accessible location in a globally accessible city.
6. Accommodation should be available at the conference venue (when the conference is held at a hotel or convention centre). Alternatively, a range of affordable accommodation should be available within 15 minutes walking from the venue.
7. The congress should include plenary sessions of interest to the global scientific community. The overall conference theme and the selection of keynote speakers should reflect this. Of course, local perspectives and concerns may be interwoven with global perspectives and concerns.
8. Proposals should include initiatives to encourage participation from developing countries and from other countries in which no RSAI Sections have yet been established. RSAI can assist financially in meeting this objective through its “Building Bridges” programme but other funding initiatives (e.g. subsidies for participating postgraduate students) are also encouraged.
9. The programme could also include one or more workshops for professional development of emerging scholars and postgraduate students, who may not be in a position to contribute a full paper to the formal scientific programme.
10. The working language of the congress is English but proposals may include arrangements for simultaneous translation of plenary sessions where this is deemed to be desirable.
11. Proposals should include a risk assessment regarding contingencies that could impact on the viability and success of the congress. Ways in which potential risks can be managed should be outlined.
12. A detailed financial plan providing details on the economic aspects of the congress should also be submitted along with the candidature.

Organization of the congress

1. For the services it provides, RSAI Office charges a commission equal to 20% of all registration fees received. The remaining registration revenue is transferred to the legal entity representing the LOC. Any anticipated sponsorship monies will be included in the budget.
2. All arrangements for the organization of the World Congress will be formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU will be signed by the President of RSAI, the Executive Director, the Chair of the LOC and the person representing the legal entity through which the LOC operates.

Application Process

1. Proposals should address each of the 12 criteria for hosting the 2024 world congress outlined above. However, it is understood that some of the information provided by the congress proposers (such as names of suggested keynote speakers, sponsorship, etc.) will be tentative at the time the proposal is submitted. 
2. Proposals should include a list of the key people involved in organizing the congress, a draft congress plan (including dates, location and schedule), a detailed draft budget (including a schedule of registration fees) and a suggested range of accommodations and charges.
3. The acceptance of a proposal by RSAI Council does not constitute a binding agreement between the two parties. The subsequently drawn up MOU, which is guided by the proposal, will constitute a binding agreement.
4. Proposals should be submitted by email to the Executive Director (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; cc: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by Thursday, June 1, 2023, 23:59 CET.
5.  A decision regarding the 2024 World Congress will be made by RSAI Council during the meeting to be held at the forthcoming PRSCO summer institute in Cambodia.

Dear colleagues,

it is with great sadness that I let you know that Roberto Camagni suddenly passed away on April 3^rd, at the age of 76 in Milan.

Roberto was Professor Emeritus of Regional and Urban Economics at Politecnico di Milano. He graduated in Economics at Bocconi University, in 1973 in Milan, and spent a full academic year at University of Pennsylvania where he got fascinated by regional and urban studies.

Roberto has always been very active in our Community. He was one of the founders of the Italian Section of the Regional Science Association International (AISRe), which he chaired between 1989 and 1992. Between 2003 and 2005, Roberto acted as President of the European Regional Science Association. Moreover, for twenty years (1987-2016) Roberto was President of the GREMI-Groupe de Recherche Européen sur le Milieux Innovateurs, Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne. In 2010, he received the ERSA Prize, and in 2017 he became Fellow of the Regional Science Association International.

From the scientific point of view, Roberto enriched our discipline a lot. The influence of the French school of Philippe Aydalot, of the GREMI group, and the cooperation with Italian colleagues, Riccardo Cappellin for the regional competitiveness analyses, and Lidia Diappi and Giorgio Leonardi, two eminent system analysts, for urban studies, were crucial in his early period. With them Roberto developed concepts like the role of territory in local knowledge creation, the “efficient, rather than optimal, urban size” contained in the SOUDY model, and the formation of urban rent between the city and the countryside.

The 1990s and 2000s were Roberto’s most active period, in which he produced an unbelievable and admirable number of seminal works in all fields of Regional and Urban Economics. In 1992, he published his Urban Economics textbook (later translated into French and Spanish, but unfortunately, to my great regret, never into English!), the first (and to date only) textbook in that discipline published by an Italian. In regional economics, it was in this rich and active phase of his life that Roberto published a constructive criticism of Paul Krugman’s provocative statement that regions and cities compete on the basis of relative comparative advantage à la Ricardo, with the rather dangerous consequence that regional policies have no reason to exist. It was also in those years that Roberto provided evidence of the importance of national (macroeconomic) effects on regional development. He demonstrated a clever scientific balance between macro-economists, who neglected all sorts of regional effects of national policies, and regional economists, at that time concentrated on reinforcement of the “endogenous regional growth model” launched in the 1970s by the industrial districts theory, and who therefore obsessively denied any kind of role of national economic phenomena in regional growth. It was in that period that Roberto became interested in urban planning. Under the influence of his wife, Maria Cristina Gibelli, Roberto’s interest centred on what was then a new approach to urban planning, known as “strategic planning”, and soon became an advisor to several Italian municipalities interested in launching a strategic plan for their city. It was in that period that Roberto entered the field of “urban sustainability”. He provided a measurable definition of this concept, and launched a large research program, leading a multidisciplinary group of economists and planners. The result was a rich interpretation of urban sustainability from both the economic and territorial perspectives.

From the mid-2000s onwards, Roberto reached full maturity, guiding his research group in many innovative research projects won through tough competition at international level. Together with his school, Roberto implemented a macro-econometric regional growth forecasting model Macroeconomic, Sectoral, Social and Territorial (MASST). It was in this phase that Roberto took up the challenge issued by the European Union to define “territorial cohesion”. He did so by developing a clear and measurable definition of this fuzzy concept, and he launched a simple and effective method to assess the impact of programs and projects on territorial cohesion which was applied in many studies and cited by several authors. It was also in those years that Roberto developed the concept of “territorial capital”. This notion synthesised all potential assets for regional growth, by underlining the economic nature of each of them, and especially each single law of accumulation and depreciation, on which to base appropriate regional policies.

Roberto was also very active as an expert for different national and international bodies, namely EU, OECD, Plan Urbain (France), the Italian Ministers of Public Works and Industry and many Italian and European Regional Governments in the fields of innovation diffusion and regional and urban development planning. In the period 1994 and 1998 Roberto was coordinator of the Groupe de Prospective sur les Villes, Datar, Paris. In 1995 he was nominated expert of the Italian Prime Minister for the ESDP - European Spatial Development Perspective, and was in charge of the Report on Urban Development and Policies, presented at the EU Ministerial Meeting in Venice, May 1996, within the Semester of Italian Chairmanship of the EU.

In 1997, Roberto was nominated Head of the Department of Urban Affairs of the Presidency of Council of Ministers, during the first Prodi Government. In the same year, Roberto was a member of the Committee for the Reform of the Urban Planning Law, Ministry of Public Works in Rome. In 1998, he was in charge of the preparation of the Framework for action for urban sustainable development for DG REGIO of the European Commission. He was expert for the EU ESPON project for the Ministry of Infrastructures, between 2001 and 2004.

He retired in 2017, but he was still very active. During the lockdown period, Roberto wrote a fantastic and admirable piece of work on Adam Smith. Through a work that—he confessed me—lasted two years of full immersion in Adam Smith's writings and immense scholarship, Roberto was able to provide us with an unbelievable opus that uncovers the legacy of such a Great Mind for Regional Science. With such a wonderful publication, published in “Great Minds in Regional Science, Vol. 2”, edited by Peter Batey and David Plane (eds.), and published by Springer, Roberto leaves us.

We will remember him for ever.

Roberta Capello

Politecnico di Milano

Dear Colleagues,

Within the GRINS project (Next Generatino EU / PNRR: https://dse.unibo.it/it/terza-missione/next-generation-eu), at the Department of Economics of the Alma Mater Studiorum Università’ di Bologna we opened a post-doc position (assegno di ricerca) within the themes of Spoke 7 (Territorial sustainability), and in particular of the work package on “Infrastructures and smart mobility: policies and strategies for resilient and sustainable territories and cities”.

Research activities will focus on the implementation of extensive discrete choice experiments on sustainable mobility and in particular on the integration of public transport and micromobility, and on the role of mobility hubs as facilitators of such integration.

Experience in the field of transport (and potentially tourism), and with discrete choice modelling and related software, is appreciated.

A PhD is not required for this position, but will be evaluated, if present, as a preferential title. Please note that the second-cycle degree (master’s degree) is the legal requirement for applying, and a winning candidate holding a non-EU degree will need to provide an official translation and a declaration of value from the competent Italian embassy/consulate within 60 days after the closing of the selection.

Although the contract is initially for one year, it is extendible within the project up to three years. The reported amount is tax free, and only includes law-mandated social security contributions.

The holder of the post-doc grant will work on the campus of RIMINI of Unibo, within a team which includes Profs Roberto Patuelli and Lorenzo Masiero, and in possible synergy with the SmartHubs project (https://www.smartmobilityhubs.eu/) and related collaborators.

The start of activities of the grant holder is expected approximately for 15 May.

Applications for the selection must be presented exclusively via web, through Unibo’s website, by 17 APRIL.

Please see the official call (also in English version) and the link to the application page at the following address: https://bandi.unibo.it/ricerca/assegni-ricerca?id_bando=66319.

For any information, please do not hesitate to contact Prof. Roberto Patuelli (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Please spread this call around to whoever you think might be interested.

Roberto Patuelli

The scientific journal Regional Science Policy and Practice belongs to Regional Science Association International and it is committed to promote the development of Regional Science across the globe specifically through the promotion of special issues on nurtured by workshops.

The main purpose of this first workshop is to mobilize and nurture talents across the Western Balkans, publish a special issue of the journal on Sustainable Regional Development and European Integration in Western Balkans and support RSAI in the creation of regional science sections in Western Balkans.

The workshop seeks to enhance participants understanding of recent developments and methodologies that could be useful for spatial and regional analysis facilitating the European integration and implementation of sustainable development goals in the Western Balkan region. Spatial assessment is more important to our understanding of economic and geographical problems, the workshop will develop the skillsets and knowledge of regional scientist to be able to analyse and understand complex spatial problems and to apply these tools in developing innovative research, in policy making and further expanding research capacities in the Western Balkan region.

Through this workshop, participants will be able to learn and apply spatial econometric models, geographic data, agglomeration and movement of labour and capital to make informed policy decisions that can facilitate the European integration process.

See program at https://westernbalkansworkshop.weebly.com/programme.html

The Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods (DEMM) of Università degli Studi di Milano is pleased to announce that submission of abstracts for the 4th European Conference, Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis are now open. The conference aims to collect contributions on “Cost-Benefit Analysis and Policy Evaluation for the Next Generation”. Papers in any area of public policy and public economics are welcome, with a focus on policy evaluation.

Potential themes include: policy design and impact evaluation in Health policies/Climate change adaptation,/Knowledge creation, Social and territorial cohesion, Methodological advances in CBA and policy evaluation.

Interested contributors should send an abstract of approximately 400 words, with the indication of a full title, corresponding author and co-authors, affiliations, and 3 keywords.

Papers to be presented at the conference will be selected by the Local Organizing Committee with the advice of an International Advisory Board.

All relevant information regarding the conference, including a detailed Call for Abstracts, will be available at the following web page, which will be constantly updated

 https://centrejeanmonnet.unimi.it/sbca-2023/

 https://www.benefitcostanalysis.org/european-conference-2023         

Important dates

Abstract submission deadline: 15 May 2023

Notification of acceptance: 16 June 2023

Early bird registration deadline: 3 July 2023

Final registration deadline: 14 July 2023

Submission of Abstracts: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sbca-eu2023

Program Chair: Chiara Del Bo - DEMM This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We are currently looking for a PhD candidate to conduct research into the ways that economic resilience can be measured at a spatial/ regional level with a focus on Australia. This program of research will extend from a larger project funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant investigating the way Australian regions dealt with the economic and employment shocks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The successful applicant will work closely with Professor Scott Baum (Griffith) and Professor William Mitchell (University of Newcastle) to develop a program of research that will expand understanding of broader regional economic processes and exogenous and endogenous economic shocks. The project will provide a unique opportunity to be trained in a range of spatial and regional economic analytical techniques with the support of experienced supervisors.

please see details: https://www.griffith.edu.au/research-study/scholarships/regional-resilience-to-economics-shocks