Regional Science Association International (RSAI)

The Regional Science Association International (RSAI), according to its official Web site, http://www.regionalscience.org, is “an international community of scholars interested in regional impacts of national or global processes of economic and social change.” The following paragraphs briefly introduce its history, organizational structure, meetings, and journals.

Formerly known as the Regional Science Association (RSA), the RSAI was founded in 1954 in the United States as a result of the then MIT-based economist Walter Isard's efforts to draw together multidisciplinary social scientists, whom he called “regional scientists,” to analyze interactions between human beings and regions. Isard served as the first president of the RSA. With its expansion all over the world, the Regional Science Association was renamed as the Regional Science Association International in 1990. As of 2008, ...