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)