ABSTRACT
Regional science was born in the mid 1950s, grew with astonishing rapidity and, some would say, has already achieved maturity—the Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart of the social sciences. The Regional Science Association was founded in December 1954. The Journal of Regional Science was established in 1960, and was followed by the International Journal of Regional Sciences, Regional Science and Urban Economics, the Canadian Journal of Regional Science and similar specialized journals in the same or closely related fields. Of all the "laws" which have been "discovered" by regional science, gravity laws are perhaps the most typical. The basic idea was formulated as early as the 1930s, and the concept is still being elaborated in recent issues of Regional Science. One of the subjects that have most interested regional scientists is urban structures; that is, the relative size and importance of cities within one national economy, usually measured by population.
