Research on urban and regional systems : contributions from GIS&T, spatial analysis, and location modeling

It has been argued that internal and external contextualizations are important aspects of research intended to be relevant, valuable, and engaged in societal progress. In this article, we advocate for scholarship focus on the city and the region as a means to achieve this goal. The notion of systems and the spatial analytic perspective intersect to enrich research and avoid the pitfalls of scholarship that is disconnected from ground truth. We discuss the concepts of space, distance, region, and system within the logic of scientific discovery and present the main elements of spatial analytic research design. The article identifies some of the main research traditions consistent with this view and the main contributors to establishing the scientific robustness of this line of scholarship. The chapters of this edited volume are situated against this backdrop.