Dear colleagues,

We want to inform you about the plenary lectures scheduled for October 16th and 17th. Professor Katarzyna Kopczewska, a researcher in the Department of Data Science at the University of Warsaw, will give the first lecture. She researches the modeling of the significance of location for economic, social, and environmental phenomena, using quantitative methods that are specifically tailored to geo-located data, primarily point data. Her research enables the optimization of locations for specific phenomena and entities, analyzing spatial density, agglomeration effects, and diffusion.

The second presentation will be given by Mr. Riccardo Crescenzi, Professor of Geographical Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has been a European Research Council (ERC) grant holder, leading a major five-year research project on foreign direct investment (FDI), global value chains (GVCs), and their territorial impacts worldwide. He is currently the LSE Principal Investigator of a large collaborative research project funded by Horizon Europe and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) on inequalities in the era of global megatrends.

We want to remind you that registration is required to send and manage communications.

Participants who registered last year can use their username and password: https://reunionesdeestudiosregionales.org/pamplona2025/en/user/

If you have forgotten your username and/or password, please click on the following link: https://reunionesdeestudiosregionales.org/pamplona2025/wp-login.php?action=lostpassword.

Please enter your email address to receive a message with instructions on recovering your username and/or password. If you don’t have an account, please register at https://reunionesdeestudiosregionales.org/pamplona2025/en/user/new/

To simplify procedures, the previous round of summaries is eliminated. The Scientific Committee will only evaluate communications and extended summaries. The models can be downloaded at: https://reunionesdeestudiosregionales.org/pamplona2025/en/user/new/.

We encourage you to send your proposals as soon as possible.

The Organizing Committee and Scientific Committee would like to invite you to propose Special Sessions until May 16th. To submit your proposal, you need to send the title of the Special Session, along with the name(s) of the coordinator(s) and a summary in both Spanish and English to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We are eagerly awaiting your arrival in Pamplona. Sincerely,

The Organizing Committee

The unexpected effects of policies on cities and regions

The Annals of Regional Science

Submissions open: 14 April 2025

Submission deadline: 15 November 2025

Editors:

• Sébastien Bourdin, Professor of Economic Geography, EM Normandie Business School, France
• Elena Ragazzi, Research Director, CNR-IRCrES, Italy
• Lisa Sella, Senior Researcher, CNR-IRCrES, Italy

Over the past few years, public policy evaluation has become an important area of research. This is partly due to (i) major changes in social and economic policies in many countries, and (ii) the introduction of new management and control procedures in the public sector. In an environment where local and regional governments are facing major budget restrictions, policy effectiveness has become a hotly debated issue. At the same time, more and more regional science articles are being published on the evaluation of these public policies, studying causal mechanisms with convincing identification strategy.

In the current research landscape, special attention is being paid to the anticipated impacts of policies. These policies can result in distributive effects, resource reallocations, or changes in socio-economic structures that profoundly influence cities and regions. For example, tax reforms, education policies, or national environmental legislation can have various and sometimes surprising repercussions on different areas, depending on their specific economic, demographic, or environmental characteristics.

However, these impacts often extend beyond the effects initially foreseen by decision-makers, and can affect dependent variables that were not expected. For instance, a policy intended to stimulate employment in a region may also alter the dynamics of internal migration or disrupt the local environmental balance in unforeseen ways. These consequences can be beneficial, such as when untargeted policies lead to an unexpected reduction in regional disparities, or they can be detrimental, raising doubts about the initial objectives of the policies.

This collection aims to explore these complex dynamics and encourages critical reflection on how public/regional/local policies shape cities and regions in sometimes unpredictable ways. We welcome contributions that analyze these often underestimated side-effects to enhance our understanding of the interactions between policy decisions and local realities. The purpose of this collection is to address the gap in the study of these unexpected impacts by inviting researchers to analyze and discuss them. The goal is to uncover how policies, even those not explicitly designed with territorial intentions, shape the spatial and socio-economic fabric of cities and regions, sometimes in unexpected ways. We encourage contributions that employ rigorous quantitative and theoretical approaches to explore these dynamics in different geographical and political contexts.

Topics of interest (but not limited to):

+ What are the unexpected impacts of national, regional, or local policies on the social, economic, and environmental dynamics of cities and regions?

+ How do unintended consequences of public policies potentially undermine, reinforce, or shift the original objectives of these interventions?

+ Which theoretical frameworks and empirical methods are best suited to identify, anticipate, and evaluate the indirect or spatially diffuse effects of public policies on territorial systems?

+ How can public decision-makers integrate the territorial side effects of policies into more adaptive and context-sensitive policy design?

+ What lessons can be drawn from past experiences where unforeseen policy impacts significantly influenced regional development outcomes?

Submissions are welcome until 15 November 2025. The collection may remain open for additional contributions beyond this date, subject to editorial decision.

Submissions to this Collection undergo the same strict peer review process as regular submissions to this journal.

Please follow the submission guidelines for authors.

+ info: https://link.springer.com/collections/jdeaafjjei

NARSC Update

Call for Papers
North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International
November 12-14, 2025
Denver, Colorado

Join us in Denver, CO for the 72nd North American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI) sponsored by the North American Regional Science Council (NARSC). To submit an abstract or a complete session, please use our online submission system. The submission deadline is July 11, 2025. Decisions concerning the acceptance of papers and sessions will be announced in late August. All presenters, including members of panel discussions, discussants, and session chairs, must register for the conference and pay the registration fee in order to attend and present.

The conference will be held at the Grand Hyatt Denver (1750 Welton Street, Denver, CO 80202-3999). A special conference room rate of $219 (plus taxes) has been negotiated with the hotel. Please consider staying at the host hotel. Staying at the Hyatt helps NARSC continue to hold these meetings. NARSC is penalized when attendees do not stay at the hotel. Also, book the conference hotel through the NARSC website to make sure NARSC gets credit for your booking. The link to book your hotel room will be available by the end of the month.

For overseas attendees, we are offering expedited abstract acceptance to anyone coming from a country that requires a visa to enter the United States. Once you have submitted your abstract, and if you need an acceptance letter, please contact NARSC Executive Director, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Abstract Submission and Registration

Click on the link to the conference section for general information on the conference.  To register for the conference or submit an abstract/session online you must first log in to the new NARSC user portal. If you attended a NARSC conference over the past couple of years or are a member of a North American regional science organization, when you reach the login page of the User Area, your account should be available under your email address, but as it is a new system you will need to reset your password. If you are not in our database, you will need to register for a free NARSC user account and then you will be able to register for the conference and submit an abstract.

Once logged, you can change your password, update your profile, submit an abstract/session, register for the conference, and check the status of your registration. You will be able to login to your account in the User Area subsequently using your valid username and password. In case you forget your password, use the password reset tool on the login page. If you have trouble receiving the password reset email, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and the support team will get that to you.

Please note that there is a surcharge for individuals who are not members of RSAI. If you attended the 2024 NARSC Meetings, or any of the MCRSA, WRSA, or SRSA meetings in the past year, then you are a member of RSAI. When you are ready to register for the conference please check your RSAI membership status. You can do that by consulting the RSAI Members List. If you have any questions regarding your RSAI membership status or would like to join RSAI please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. at the RSAI Central Office.

Individual papers and organized sessions must be submitted online in the abstract submission section of the website between now and JULY 11, 2025. The conference registration section will be open soon and allows secure electronic financial transactions. Information about the workshops will be posted in late July. If you are potentially interested in attending any workshops it is suggested that you wait until information about them is available before registering for the conference. Be sure to consult the conference website for additional information and details.

NARSC is an international scholarly organization that focuses on regional analysis, ranging from urban and spatial theory to applied problems in regional development, sustainability, environmental management, and rural land use.  We are an interdisciplinary association, with members representing fields as diverse as economics, agricultural economics, public policy, urban planning, civil engineering, geography, finance, and demography.  The annual North American RSAI conference is the premier regional science meeting in North America and attracts scholars and practitioners from around the world.

Special Sessions at NARSC 2025

Conference organizers welcome individual papers and organized sessions relating to a wide variety of topics that are included within the diverse realm of regional science. As usual, there will be several organized sessions. If you are interested in participating in one of these organized sessions, please contact the session organizers. Details about these can be found here. Please note that the list of special sessions is updated on a regular basis, so please check regularly

If you are interested in organizing a special session, please contact Program Chair Neil Reid at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

NARSC Hotel Reservations

A block of rooms has been reserved at the The Grand Hyatt Denver (1750 Welton St, Denver, CO 80202).

A special conference room rate of $219 (plus taxes) has been negotiated with the hotel. The reservation link will be available shortly.

EXTENDED DEADLINE

Call for Abstracts & Applications

Join us from July 8 to 11, 2025, in Porto, Portugal, for the 32nd APDR Congress and the Sustainable Regional Development Academy!

This year’s theme: "Sustainable Transformation and Spatial Interaction of People and Places: Urban and Rural Landscapes for Mobility, Migration and Tourism"

Key deadlines:
- Abstract submissions: April 30, 2025
- Academy applications: May 15, 2025

Full event details: https://www.apdr.pt/congresso/2025/index.html

Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, learn, and contribute to the future of sustainable regional development.

Looking forward to meeting you in Porto, Portugal!

The Organizing Committee and the Board of APDR

32^nd APDR Congress

Deadline for aplications postponed until Monday, April 7, 2025

Download 2025 Aisre Summer School Call

Artificial Intelligence, Globalisation and New Territorial Divides. Theories and applications

9 – 13 June 2025

Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering

Politecnico di Milano

AISRe is proud to announce its sixth summer school on Artificial Intelligence, Globalisation and New Territorial Divides. Theories and applications organized by the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with the Horizon Europe Project ESSPIN (Economic, Social and SPatial Inequalities in Europe in the Era of Global Mega-trends, grant agreement No 101061104).
The first two decades of the new century have been marked by a rapidly changing environment, characterised by radical technological transformations coupled with an altered global landscape and a reorientation of international trade and value chains, in response of the pandemic and of rising geopolitical tension and energy crisis. A recurrent conclusion made by many scholars and commentators is that the combination of these mega-trends has created rather unfavourable conditions for balanced growth and socio-spatial resilience, thus amplifying one of the chief paradoxes of our time: the co-occurrence of powerful technology with increasing inequalities among individuals, social groups, regions and cities. Indeed, the rise of inequalities taking off at the turn of the millennium has been marked by a novel spatial dimension driven by the increasing split between a small group of big, wealthy, resilient and high-income superstar city-regions and the remaining ones, suffering from a mix of stagnating and/or low productivity, limited opportunities and economic development prospects.
The summer school will introduce PhD students and early career researchers to this rich and expanding debate by merging theoretical and empirical perspectives. In particular, the school will propose an overview of the main economic theories analysing the genesis, causes and the persistence of regional and urban divides, by digging into the role of the transformations induced by artificial intelligence and the restructuring of global value chains and exploring the possible policy actions at the regional and urban scales to mitigate the potential expansion of territorial divides.

Organisation of the school
The school is articulated into 5 days from 9 to 13 June 2025 and will be taught in English. Each day will include lecture sessions by expert scholars in the field and paper development sessions, with the following daily timetable:
8.30-10.30: lectures
11.00-13.00: students’ presentations
14.00-16.00: lectures
16.30-18.30: students’ presentations
A Meet the Editors section will be organized with the participation of Andrea Caragliu (Regional Science Policy and Practice), Ugo Fratesi (Spatial Economic Analysis), Balázs Lengyel (Global Challenges and Regional Science), Laura Resmini (Scienze Regionali).

Lecturers
Domenico Scalera (Università del Sannio), Emanuele Felice (IULM), Camilla Lenzi (Politecnico di Milano), Margarita Kalamova (OECD), Nicola Cortinovis (Utrecht University), Giovanni Perucca (Politecnico di Milano), Balázs Lengyel (Corvinus University of Budapestand HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies), Ana Moreno Monroy (OECD), Andrea Conte (EU JRC), Raffaele Paci (Università di Cagliari and CRENOS).

Local scientific and organizing committee
Camilla Lenzi (Coordinator), Roberta Capello, Andrea Caragliu, Silvia Cerisola, Simona Ciappei, Roberto Dellisanti, Elisa Panzera, Giovanni Perucca.
Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering.

How to apply
The call is open to PhD students and early career researchers interested in regional science. Applications must be submitted by Monday, April 7, 2025 30th of March, 2025 filling out the application form at the link:

https://forms.gle/9LXNyMtGyoZ6wdB46

Candidates must send:

1. An updated Curriculum Vitae specifying the candidate’s research experience (Europass format, max. 5 page);
2. an extended abstract of their research project, thesis proposal or working paper, including: a) state of the art of the literature on the topic; b) research questions and expected contribution of the work; c) methods and data used or foreseen; d) expected or preliminary results (max. 1000 words);
3. a motivation letter detailing the reason for application and the candidate’s expectations regarding the school.
4. ID card and copy of your AISRe membership or RSAI membership.

All files (pdf format) can be upload in the application form.
The selection committee will evaluate the applications based on the documentation submitted.
For further information, please write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or contact Prof.ssa Camilla Lenzi (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
A maximum of 30 candidates will be selected for participation, and they will receive an email notification by 10 April 2025.

Registration
The participation fee will be 135 euros. Coffee breaks and lunches are included in the participation fee.
Participants are required to be individual members of AISRe. Individual membership has a cost of 130 Euros, reduced to 65 Euros for young researchers (younger than 35, doctoral students and post-doc researchers). For school registration, you must register on the AISRe website (www.aisre.it) by creating your own user profile. You will find instructions for payment in your personal area. For further information, you may contact AISRe secretariat Diana Sarmiento at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Venue
The 6th AISRe Summer School will take place at the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, Milano.

More info at: https://www.aisre.it/en/6th-summer-school-aisre-milan-2025/

Meet Andrea Caragliu, the new Editor-in-Chief of Regional Science Policy and Practice

Andrea Caragliu is Associate Professor of Regional and Urban Economics at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, where he acts as Coordinator of the Ph.D. programme in Architecture, Built Environment, and Construction Engineering. His work focuses on agglomeration economies, macroeconometric regional growth, cross-border regions, and smart urban development.

Assoc. Prof. Caragliu was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of Regional Science Policy and Practice, a journal of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI), in January 2025. Previously, he had acted as Executive Director of the RSAI and joined several Horizon/FP, DG Regio, and ESPON projects as partner/principal investigator.

What inspired your interest in Regional and Urban Economics?

As a young graduate in Economics, I started to focus on growth issues – and, as pointed out by Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas in the hyper-cited 1988 JME paper, “The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like [those related to growth] are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.” Later, upon applying for a post-doc position at Politecnico, I discovered a world of colleagues who focused on the spatial breakdown of the economic outcomes that are determined by the rational decision of consumers and firms to locate in a place, due to the net benefits expected from this decision.

As the new Editor-in Chief of Regional Science Policy & Practice, what is your vision for the journal?

Let me take a chance here to highlight the recent Editorial that the new Team (André Chagas, Hee-Jung Jun, Neil Reid, Terciane Sabadini Carvalho, and myself) have just published in issue 1/2025. Now that the journal is gold open access since January 2024, all articles published in RSPP, the Editorial included, are fully accessible to everybody.

The two previous Editorial Boards, in particular the Editors-in-Chief, Michael Carroll and Tomaz Dentinho, did a terrific job. The journal has grown in terms of the number of submissions, average quality of the papers published, and overall impact. Still, there is always room for improvement. Our top priority now is to strengthen the journal’s identity. We want to make RSPP the reference journal of the best papers on regional policies, as well as on the regional impacts of space-blind policies, for all disciplines.

This first goal walks hand in hand with a further effort to raise the bar of the average quality of the papers published in Regional Science Policy & Practice, to better serve the RSAI community and regional science stakeholders globally.

As challenging as these goals may seem, we look forward to your support in making them happen. Please send your best spatial policy papers to RSPP and let us all make it the reference journal in the field of regional and urban policies.

What makes Regional Science Policy & Practice unique?

Regional Science Policy & Practice is among the very few journals explicitly focusing on regional and urban policies. The Editorial Team have been carefully selected to provide authors with a high quality and speedy review process, constructive comments, and the use of an inclusive language. RSPP is open to everyone, and we look forward to receiving high quality papers on regional and urban policies from all backgrounds.

All the above, combined with the global regional science community’s commitment to the discipline, make the Editorial Team believe that authors who decide to submit to RSPP over the next couple of years will benefit from the journal’s ongoing growth – in terms of impact, indexation, and the possibility to influence policy debates.

What are the hot topics in the field right now? Are there any themes on which you are particularly looking forward to receiving submissions?

While the focus on policies may suggest that RSPP occupies a relatively small niche in the scientific landscape, I am convinced that the continuous developments in new policies, as reactions to an ever-changing landscape, will provide countless sources of inspiration for regional scientists. One aspect that is haunting regional scientists, urban economists, and geographers globally is the changing interest in spatial policies. Rising global geopolitical tensions are forcing many countries to increase their budget on defense items, while less funding seems to be available to policies that not only focus on places as a means to offset the negative impacts of space-blind policies, but also target places as triggers of bottom-up development. I would also like to stress that the very concept of space-blind policy is tricky, as it seems to suggest that you may enact policies that exert equal effects all over different regions, while everything we do has a set of potential spatial consequences we should not ignore. So, plenty of food for thought!

Have you got any advice for researchers who wish to publish their paper in Regional Science Policy & Practice?

Think about policy experiments that have a potential spatial breakdown, or of policies that target regions and cities, and use the best empirical methods (be they quantitative or qualitative – and we welcome practice papers, too!) to find counterintuitive results, capable of influencing the policy agenda.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/regional-science-policy-and-practice/about/news/meet-andrea-caragliu-the-new-editor-in-chief-of-regional-science-policy-and-practice?utm_campaign=STMJ_1740741656_SC&utm_medium=BAN&utm_source=WEB&dgcid=STMJ_1740741656_SC

The APDR invites regional scientists, economists, sociologists, geographers, urban planners, policy makers, and researchers of related disciplines to participate in the 32^nd APDR Congress with the theme "Sustainable Transformation and Spatial Interaction of People and Places: Urban and Rural Landscapes for mobility, migration and tourism" that will be held from 10 to 11 of July, 2025, at the Universidade Portucalense (UPT), Porto, Portugal.

On July 8 and 9, 2025, just before the main conference, a Sustainable Regional Development Academy will be organized for a limited number participants at the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), Porto, Portugal.

The call for Abstracts and Applications are open and your participation is very welcome!

Deadline for Abstracts submissions: April 2, 2025. Authors should submit their abstracts through online submission system by following the link https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/APDR2025

Deadline for Academy Applications: May 15, 2025. More information at https://www.apdr.pt/congresso/2025/academy.html

All information at the congress website: http://www.apdr.pt/congresso/2025.

Looking forward to meeting you in Porto, Portugal!

The Organizing Committee and the Board of APDR

32^nd APDR Congress

Decision by the Evaluation Committee: June 30, 2025

AISRe supports the development of early career researchers (scholars younger than 35 years and who have received their PhD certificate no more than three before the application deadline) by granting a scholarship for a research visiting period in a hosting research institution in the European (EU27 + UK) territory.