A location analytics perspective of regional science at a crossroad

Abstract

Location analytics have been a mainstay in regional science since its inception. Why? Perhaps the biggest reason is the ability to tease out important spatial heterogeneity nuances, but also to communicate geographically oriented analysis, planning, management and policy issues in rigorous ways, often as mathematical models, that can be subjected to further scrutiny and evaluation. Further, addressing broad challenges facing emergency response, food production, risk mitigation, transportation, public health, crime, housing and other issues through such approaches has proven an immense benefit to society. This paper focuses on the evolving subfield within regional science of location analysis and modeling, highlighting contributions to date but also detailing exciting areas of advancement involving spatial optimization and geographic information science. The paper includes a reflection on regional science journal publication trends, but also broader patterns of location analytics activity. It is hoped that this review will lead to a reassessment of regional science priorities, and consideration of the role that our specialty areas have in maintaining core strengths as well as potential for growing the discipline in the coming years.