Professor Boyce was honored with a special award on the 50th anniversary of the Japan Section of the RSAI for his paper, "Predicting Road Traffic Route Flows Uniquely for Urban Transportation Planning, " published in the  Studies in Regional Science, vol.42, no.1, The 50th Anniversary Special Issue.

Dr. David Boyce is an expert of transportation planning. He has been solong time engaged in practical urban transportation planning in large urbanareas including Chicago in US as well as he has actively participated ininternational scholarly meetings of regional science, transportation planning,urban and regional planning, and so on.

The traffic assignment model, which was developed by him and his heirsin the field of Transportation Engineering, had a great affect on practice andtheory in the field of urban transportation planning in Japan in 1970’s. Themethodology was based on stochastic probability theory. In this sense, at thebeginning it was taken as extraneous one from the view point of economistsbecause their methodology is, on the other hand, largely dependent on microdeterministic behavioral approach.

This paper has successfully improved traditional traffic route assignmentmethodology through introduction of concept of entropy and potentialfunction into the traditional route assignment model, and has provided arobust theoretical basis for the developed methodology by showing marginalconditions for equilibrium traffic flows at all links. It is more consistent withmicro behavioral approach traditionally adopted by the economists.

Dear all,

The new RSAI Newsletter November 2012 can now be found under

 http://www.regionalscience.org/Publications/RSAI-Newsletters/

Dear colleagues,

It is an enormous pleasure to inform you that RPER has been accepted for indexation in Scopus. This is an important step in RPER’s life because it means the strengthening of our international acknowledge, although we are proud to claim that we are as well a Portuguese journal. Please, spread this good new as widely as possible, among your collaborators and research team. Although the RPER main scope is the Portuguese regional reality, we are keen to publish other contributions whenever they are important to international regional science.

Kind regards,

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

The top professor at VU University Amsterdam never stops studying.

Always curious about things he doesn't understand, Peter Nijkamp is continually taking up new research topics - which often develop into flourishing fields of science. And when he has mastered them, the leading economist turns his gaze in yet another direction.

Peter Nijkamp (born in 1946) would like to be a student again. Law, maybe, biology, or history. And yet, as the first university professor at VU University Amsterdam, he seems to be right at the other end of the scale. This spatial economist is at the very peak of the pyramid. He has more freedom than other professors, more research funding and no administrative or teaching obligations.

In fact, this set-up does allow Peter Nijkamp to remain something of a student. One who has always worked hard because everything was so interesting, and now has a bit more free time to devote to the topics that really fascinate him. Not a bad position for someone with the wide range of interests he has. Thanks to his reputation, people keep on turning up with exciting new jobs. "You'd be astonished at the vast array of things that get presented to me every day," he says.

"Fortunately, I have no trouble switching from one topic to another. I'm a real workaholic, but my interests cover a wide field of science and policy, and I couldn't be happier in my work." He doesn't need much sleep, is often the first to turn up in the morning and finds it difficult to tear himself away in the evening even after everyone else is long gone.

Read full interview with Peter Nijkamp

( http://www.vu.nl/en/Images/Engels%20interview%20Nijkamp_tcm12-310080.pdf)

History of the Japan Section written by Professor Kohno and Professor Kurashimo

New URL of the Japan Section of the RSAI

 http://www.jsrsai.jp/

RSAI is pleased to announce the election of the following Fellows in 2013:

Roberta Capello, Polytechnic Milano, ITALY   Roberta Capello is professor in Regional and urban economics at the Politecnico of Milan. Past-President of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). Editor in chief of the Italian Journal of Regional Science and co-editor of Letters in Spatial and Resource Science (Springer Verlag). Editor in chief of Papers in Regional Science from RSAI. Author of many scientific papers and a textbook in Regional Economics, published in Italian and English.

Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Kyoto University, JAPAN   Kobayashi is the recipient of several awards and prizes for his research including the Hinomaru Prize in 1988, the JSCE (Japan Society of Civil Engineers) Research Prize in 1993, 2001 and 2007. In 2007 he was included in the Top 50 City Creators and Urban Experts of the Ministry of the Environment of Denmark. From 1978-1986, Kobayashi was a Research Associate in Graduate School of Engineering of Kyoto University. In 1987 he became an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Systems Engineering at Tottori University, where in 1990 he became a full time Professor. In 1996 he returned to Kyoto University as a full time Professor at the Graduate School of Engineering. In 2007 he became the Vice Dean of the Graduate School of Management of Kyoto University and in 2009 he became the Dean.

Tönu Puu, University of Umeå, SWEDEN   Tönu Puu, born in 1936 in Tallinn, was Professor of Economics at Umeå University from 1971 to 2001. Afterwards he worked at the Centre for Regional Studies (Cerum) for ten years. In total, he has published twenty books and 130 scholarly articles in economics, mathematics and philosophy.

Jean-Claude Thill, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA   Jean-Claude is Professor of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. He has previously held positions at SUNY - Buffalo, the University of Georgia, Florida Atlantic University and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He has also served NARSC superbly for many years in many administrative capacities. His research has centered on the spatial dimension of mobility systems and their consequences on how space is used and organized in modern societies; statistical and computational methods of spatial analysis; and most recently urban land-use dynamics.

History of the Regional Science Association of French Language published in 2012, by Prof. Antoine Bailly, Prof.Pierre-Henri Derycke and Prof. André Torre