The Environment in Regional Science : An Eclectic Review

The environment, thought of broadly, is increasingly an important topic in regional science research. Theoretical and empirical inquiries by regional scientists have gradually begun to address the numerous environmental ramifications of regional science queries. Consequently, there now exists a substantial literature on what we may call the environment in regional science. Given this state of affairs, the objective of this paper is to survey this vast literature. To provide sufficient focus, we do this by discussing five principal issues in the extant literature on the environment in regional science. These issues are (i) regional economic development, (ii) environmental regulation, (iii) natural resources, (iv) international affairs, and (v) geographic information systems. Our survey is both retrospective and prospective in nature. We are interested not only in what has been accomplished thus far but also in where research on the environment in regional science is headed in the future