Spatial Economic Science : New Frontiers in Theory and Methodology

With the dawn of the twenty-first century comes the awareness that current rapid political-economic-social and technological transformations will affect our of living, by producing new forms of information, communications, common way market, work-style and leisure. In this context, human behaviour will certainly change its 'fixed' parameters. It is likely that the relationships between internal structures and external influences, between individual components and collective behaviour, as well as between multi-scale networks and interrelated dynamics, will show spatio-temporal patterns which will be difficult to predict by means of our usual tools. As a consequence, academic research is increasingly being required to play an active role in addressing new ways of understanding and forecasting the sets of interacting structures, ranging from the technical to the organizational, and from the social to the economic and political levels, while at the same time incorporating concerns about the 'new' economy, environment, society, information and technology. It is now evident that social science - especially spatial and economic scienc- needs innovative 'paths', together with continuous cross-fertilization among the many disciplines involved. In order to investigate these intriguing perspectives, we seem to have embarked on an era of methodological reflections - rather than developing strong theoretical foundations. This volume aims to provide an overview of these new insights and frontiers for theoretical/methodological studies and research applications in the space-economy.

This volume aims to provide an overview of new frontiers in theoretical/methodological studies and research applications concerning the space-economy.
It is a focussed selection of ideas and reflections put forward by scientists exploring new insights and channels of research, where the quantitative synthesis of spatial systems is the integrative framework. The conclusion drawn from the book is that the fast-changing socio-economic structures and political landscapes are pushing spatial economic science in various "evolutionary" directions. From this perspective, the valuable heritage of the discipline, built up over fifty years, constitutes the solid methodological basis from which to proceed.