Regional science's formal roots date to the aggressive campaigns by Walter Isard and his supporters to promote the "objective" and "scientific" analysis of settlement, industrial location, and urban development.
Topically speaking, regional science took off in the wake of Walter Christaller's book Die Zentralen Orte in Sűddeutschland (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1933; transl.
Central Places in Southern Germany, 1966), soon followed by Tord Palander's (1935) Beiträge zur Standortstheorie; August Lösch's Die räumliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft (Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1940; 2nd rev.
Nonetheless, Walter Isard's first book in 1956, Location and Space Economy, apparently captured the imagination of many, and his third, Methods of Regional Analysis, published in 1960, only sealed his position as the father of the field.
Much of this predecessor work is documented well in Walter Isard's Location and Space Economy[3] as well as Claude Ponsard's Histoire des Théorie Économique Spatiales.
The early German hegemony more or less starts with Johann Heinrich von Thünen and runs through both Wilhelm Launhardt and Alfred Weber to Walter Christaller and August Lösch.
Most recently the journal Spatial Economic Analysis has been published by the RSAI British and Irish Section with the Regional Studies Association.
On any occasion where public policy is directed at the sub-national level, such as a city or group of counties, the methods of regional science can prove useful.
Traditionally, regional science has provided policymakers with guidance on the following issues:[9] By targeting federal resources to specific geographic areas the Kennedy administration realized that political favors could be bought.
The unification of Europe and the increased internationalization of the world's economic, social, and political realms has further induced interest in the study of regional, as opposed to national, phenomena.
The new economic geography appears to have garnered more interest in Europe than in America where amenities, notably climate, have been found to better predict human location and re-location patterns, as emphasized in recent work by Mark Partridge.
Attacks on regional science's practitioners by radical critics began as early as the 1970s, notably David Harvey who believed it lacked social and political commitment.