Article contents
A brief history of spatial economics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2016
Extract
The integration of time and of space into economic theory have been unequal processes. Economists have spontaneously and almost invariably viewed the economy with a temporal dimension: economic agents calculate within a particular time frame, economic activities are transformed by innovation, production resources are accumulated, and dynamic processes induce periods of steady growth, recession or economic cycles. Space, however, is neither a major nor a permanent feature of economic thought. Questions such as proximity, location, spatial competition, spatial interaction, urban structures and urban hierarchies, the role of regions and the formation of territories have been given sporadic treatment only. The history of spatial economics is an alternating pattern of attempts at integration and periods of oblivion or of varying degrees of marginalisation of space, which has at times been “a neglected topic in mainstream economics” as Thisse and Walliser put it below, p. 11. The present-day integration of space in economic theory is itself the result of a series of episodes of continuity and of change, as with the transition from New Urban Economics to agglomeration economics analysed hereafter by Baumont and Huriot.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1998
Footnotes
Most of the papers in this issue originated from contributions to round table discussions of spatial analysis at Chamonix (January 1996) and Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (October 1996) organised or jointly organised by GDR EVER and funded by PIR-Villes.
References
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