Pushing regional studies beyond its borders

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how to push the field of regional studies beyond its present institutional, conceptual and methodological borders. It does this from five perspectives: innovation and competitiveness; globalization and urbanization; social and environmental justice; local and regional development; and industrial policy. It argues that the future of regional studies requires approaches that, in combination, result in the pushing on (by creating), pushing off (by consolidating), pushing back (by critiquing) and pushing forward (by collectively constructing) the field.

KEYWORDS:

• regional studies
• competitiveness
• urbanization
• social and environmental justice
• local and regional development
• industrial policy

JEL:

• R1
• R11
• R12
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper originated from the opening plenary panel session at the 2019 Regional Studies Association (RSA) Annual Conference, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 5–7 June. The authors thank the RSA and local organizers for the invitation to organize and participate in this panel; and the audience for its contributions.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

John Harrison http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6434-5142

Ben Derudder http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6195-8544

Isabelle Anguelovski http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6409-5155

Sergio Montero http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8708-1290

David Bailey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1956-0556

Notes

1. The cluster specialization of these candidate cities can be accessed at the U.S. Cluster Mapping Project (USCMP) (http://www.clustermapping.us/). The USCMP’s underlying cluster definitions are developed by Delgado, Porter, and Stern (2016).

2. See http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/chronic/docs/Parks%20Report%202016-rev_051816.pdf.

3. See https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/9/18300797/barcelona-spain-superblocks-urban-plan; and https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/ecologiaurbana/en/what-we-do-and-why/quality-public-space/superblocks.

4. See https://www.boston.gov/departments/environment/resilient-boston-harbor.

5. See https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2019/05/02/moakley-park-east-boston-climate-resiliency.

6. We only have to look over the past decade to see the institutional response as the Regional Studies Association (RSA) went from having one journal for 40 years – Regional Studies – to a suite of five, as Spatial Economic Analysis (2006), Territory, Politics, Governance (2013), Regional Studies, Regional Science (2014) and Area Development & Policy (2016) were added to see one indication of this expansion of the field.