Location Theory and Spatial Analysis

• From Regional Development to Local Development: On The Life, Death and Rebirth (?) of Regional Science as a Policy Relevant Science - In the following paragraphs, I shall attempt to describe briefly how and why regional science, both as a field of study and a policy science, has changed since its founding in the 1950s. Regional Science has gone through a period of profound change in recent years -- some would say through a period of crisis and decline. The term "Regional Science" is used here in a generic sense to cover the broad range of social science inquiry devoted to issues of regional development in various forms. The analysis that follows is in part a personal journey, influenced by the author's personal experience, first as a student of regional science at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, and after that, as a practitioner and scholar of regional economic development in Canada and, more recently, in Latin America.
• Trevor Hale's Location Science References - This page contains a listing of over 3050 location science, facility location, and related references. A few of the references listed are incomplete.
• Location-Theoretical Traditions
• Empirical Evidence of Regional Growth: The Centre-Periphery Discussion - The breakthrough in new location theory was Krugman¹s book on geography and trade, though others like Rivera-Batiz had already come close to his ideas before. Until its publication even regional scientists carefully avoided the word geography. They were afraid that the audience, expecting slide shows of industrial landscapes, would fall asleep. Now, the well-known Krugman not only talks about geography, he even puts the word in the title of his book!
  What made him and other leading persons in the profession think about economic geography? Definitely not the tradition of location theory. Krugman is most unkind about it. In his preface he writes: "Although the intellectual tradition of location theory is both wide and deep, what is taught is usually a very narrow set of geometric tricks involving triangles and hexagons."
  Like any new theory, this one was triggered by external and internal forces. The internal force was that arriving at location theory was just the next logical step in the new trade theory which had developed during the eighties, and to which Krugman made major contributions. One of the starting points of the new trade theory was to explain trade between countries not differing significantly with respect to endowments. Hence, the theory had to give an endogenous explanation of regional specialisation patterns. From there it was only a small step to introduce a true spatial dimension by allowing for positive transport costs.
• Geoengineering Solutions For Spatial Databases - Planners and engineers are finding themselves on the front lines in the drive to reinvent their organizations to be more efficient, competitive, and responsive to their customers. For utilities, public works agencies, and other engineering-related organizations involved in infrastructure development and management, business as usual is giving way to new paradigms on work and communication. The highly structured, often bureaucratic model that was effective and appropriate when these organizations were formed, 100 or more years ago, is no longer suitable in the face of current business and economic realities.
• Routing and Locating to Get There Faster - Location can mean success or failure for a business, but for a fire department, location is a matter of life and death. That's why fire fighters are at the forefront of creating very sophisticated traffic models for facilities location planning and vehicle routing. What benefits can you glean from their efforts?
• Location Analysis Tools Help Starbucks Brew Up New Ideas - The phenomenal growth at Starbucks Coffee Co. has been aided with the help of site selection technology to strengthen the decision-making process of strategic planning and market development. For insight into the process, Business Geographics Editor Joe Francica recently talked with Starbucks' Cydnie Horwat, vice president of store development, and Jayson Tipp, director of portfolio strategy.
• Location Strategies - A central theme and goal of this paper is to demonstrate that spatial decision support systems (SDSS) can be used as an important element in the development of strategic objectives and long range plans for retail businesses with spatial analysis needs. As an organizations internal and external environment becomes more complex, decision making poses more challenges. Markets are increasingly segmented, while individual lifestyles replace mass consumption. To become and remain competitive, firms rely on flexibility and adaptation to differentiated consumer demands. The spatial component of data is a type of relationship to be measured and exploited in developing information and knowledge to support information decisions. For diverse private firms SDSS are fundamental tools aiding in long range strategic planning and goal setting, used for business decision making. "During the next decade, businesses will be confronted with tough challenges for maintaining market share. It is likely that SDSS will dominate as a key tool for strategic planning".
• Sources of regional inefficiency An integrated shift-share, data envelopment analysis and input-output approach - Downloadable paper in pdf format.
• A review of spatial statistical techniques for location studies - While the new economic geography of trade and location has, understandably enough, concentrated on developing models of stylised relationships, it now seems that a review of some techniques which may be applied in empirical testing could prove useful. It is this task that will be approached here, conditioned by the advances taking place in new economic geography on the one hand, and in spatial data analysis on the other.
• The Death of Distance - Introduction
• Location Quotient Economic Analysis
• Measuring and Representing Accessibilty in the Information Age
• Theoretical and Quantitative Geography
• Section on Location Analysis
• The Death of Distance: A Trendspotter's Guide
• Distance is Dead: Long Live Geography! - a pdf file download
• Understanding Spatial Structure From Network Data: Theoretical
• Location Strategies, Spatial Decision Support Systems, And Strategic Planning
• Walter Christaller
• Silicon Valley and Route 128
• The Thunen Model as a Paradigm for Rural Development
• Distance, Competition and the Information Superhighway: Towards a Modified Geographic Location Theory

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