This book contains the complete text of the special Golden Anniversary
issue of the flagship journal of the Regional Science Association
International (RSAI), Papers in Regional Science (Volume 83, Number 1),
as well as the full text of Walter Isard's Presidential Address "The
future (near and far) of regional science". Professor Isard originally
delivered the speech in a special plenary session of the fiftieth North
American Meetings of the Regional Science Association International. The
session began with a ceremonial kickoff to the year-long celebration of
the multidisciplinary field's first 50 years. At the ceremony, held on
the morning of Friday, November 21,2004 at the DoubleTree Hotel in
Philadelphia, we presented Walter Isard, the founder of our
multidisciplinary field, as well as Antoine Bailly, the President of the
Regional Science Association International, and David Boyce, the
Association's Archivist, with commemorative first copies of the
anniversary issue. This book, entitled Fifty Years of Regional Science,
consists of a compendium of "thought" papers authored by a
representative sampling of some of the field's leading scholars. For the
special journal issue we originally titled the collection: "The
Brightest of Dawns".