Regional science

Abstract

Regional science is a rather vast field of inquiry that studies the spatial dynamics of human activity. Accordingly, after a brief description of the field and its early history, this entry focuses upon issues of social measurement, concentrating on subject matter that is core to the field today. It begins with a basic—how to identify regions in a social context? Given space is essential, it then moves on to the role of mobility and how it is modeled. A prime concern of the field follows: regional economic development with concepts of industrial economic primacy and diversity at its core. Associated discussions follow on how to measure and model interindustry relatedness at a subnational level. A stinging concern in the measurement of anything at a subnational level, particularly with any sort of detail by social group or industry, is a lack of data compared to that available for the nation within which regions lie. So, it includes a discussion of how data is masked and how regional scientists typically overcome the data-scarcity problem. The entry ends with some afterwords that apologize for and rationalize its coverage, which inevitably must give the field short shrift.