Minutes of the PRSCO Council Meeting(Approved by the PRSCO Council Meeting in Seattle, 13th November, 2004)
Held on Friday 21 November 2003
Academy Café, Doubletree Hotel
Philadelphia, PA, USA

1. Call to Order
President David Plane opened the meeting at 12:30 pm.
2. Apologies received and roll-call
Apologies received:
David Edgington (CRSA), Budy Resosudarmo (IRSA), Ishak Yusof (MRSA), Jin
Ho Choi (KRSA)
Present:
P. Aroca (Friend of PRSCO from Chile); A. Bailly (RSAI President); P. Batey (LongRange Planning Committee RSAI); G. Clarke (Executive Director RSAI);
K. Donaghy (Immediate Past Executive Director RSAI); R. Florax (Editor-in-chiefPiRS); L. Gibson (WRSA, Long Range Planning Committee RSAI); K. Haynes (LongRange Planning Committee RSAI); G. Hewings (Immediate Past President RSAI); Y.
Higano (JSRSAI, Executive Secretary PRSCO); J. Madden (ANZRSAI);
P. Nijkamp (Long Range Planning Committee RSAI); S.-K. Peng (CRSA-T); D. Plane(WRSA, President PRSCO); J. Poot (ANZRSAI); J. Quigley (WRSA);
J. Serrano (Amecider, Vice-President PRSCO); R. Stimson (Vice-President Elect RSAI)
3. Confirmation of Section representatives as at 1 November 2003
AMECIDER: J. Serrano (Vice-President), R. Wences
ANZRSA: J. Madden, J PootCRSA: D. Edgington, R. Shearmur
CRSA-T: C.-M. Feng, C. Mai
IRSA: B. Brodjonegoro, B. Resosudarmo
JSRSAI: Y. Higano (Executive Secretary), Y. Miyata, K. Tanaka, M. Tawada
KRSA: J.H. Choi, S.O. Park (Immediate Past President)
WRSA: L.J. Gibson, D. Plane (President), J.M. Quigley, R. Stough4. Minutes of the PRSCO Council Meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, 2 July 2003
The minutes were approved as a correct record of the meeting.
5. Report on preparations for the 19th Pacific Conference of the RSAI, Tokyo, July
25-28, 2005
Y. Higano handed out a draft of the first call for papers. The conference would be held at
Nihon University College of Economics in Tokyo. The conference theme is “Synthesis ofDisciplines for Sustainable Regional Development”. The early bird conference fee would
be US$250. K. Donaghy noted that under the new RSAI mode of operation there would1

no longer be a royalty fee of US $10 charged by RSAI for each conference participant.
Instead, conference participants who are members of sections would be automaticallymembers of RSAI. Because the RSAI membership fee for a basic level of services wasexpected to be US$20, the PRSCO conference fee for non-members would be set at
US$250 + US$25 = US$275, thus ensuring that non-RSAI members would have a(small) financial incentive to join RSAI.
6. Venue and organization of the 2004 Summer InstituteDr Ramon Antonio Gutierrez, who had offered to organize the 8th PRSCO SummerInstitute in Chile in 2004, was unable to continue in this role due to personal
circumstances. J. Serrano reported on an alternative proposal that would involve acollaborative venture among 20 regional universities in Chile. The meeting could be held
jointly with a second national meeting in regional science and/or linked to the APEC
summit. Possible dates are in July, the 1st half of August or the 2nd half of September
2004.
The universities joint venture would be discussed at a meeting of university Rectors onNovember 27.
P. Aroca of IDEAR (Institute De Economia Aplicada Regional, i.e. the Institute ofApplied Regional Economics) noted that regional science was not well developed inChile. However, his Institute has staff with a high level of expertise in the field (withPhDs from e.g. Université Catholique de Louvain, the Autonomous University of Madrid,and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, and PhD students at the University of Illinois
at Urbana Champaign). IDEAR is therefore keen on being part of the organizing
committee.
Y. Higano noted that he had also had contact with Malaysian regional scientists, whooffered to step in and host a Summer Institute if the Chilean proposal fell through. TheMalaysian group planned to host a regional science meeting in 2004 in any case.
D. Plane then appointed a five-person sub-committee consisting of P. Aroca , Y. Serrano,
Y. Higano, G. Hewing and himself, to ensure that final decisions on the 2004 Summer
Institute would be made soon.
7. Progress report on regional science groups in the Pacific Rim area
This matter was already discussed in the context of the proposed Summer Institute inChile, as noted above.
8. Papers in Regional Science
J. Poot noted that the number of submissions from the Asia-Pacific area was down on lastyear. Currently he receives about 20% of the annual submissions. K. Haynes commented
that because North-American authors tend to submit papers to the North-American PiRS
editor (J. Poon) rather than the Pacific one, the number of submissions by regional
scientists in the PRSCO area was actually rather larger. R. Florax noted that the target
was still for a global total of around 100 submitted papers per annum. In comparison,
about 80 papers were submitted in 2002, and there were already sufficient finalized
papers in the queue for publication in 2004.

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9. RSAI matters
Graham Clark outlined the structural change proposed for RSAI and the policy ofuniversal membership (i.e. RSAI membership of all members of all local sections aroundthe world) that had been accepted in principle by the RSAI Council. The proposed
structure would be flexible and would also permit individual membership through thenew publisher of PiRS (Blackwell) at a rate of US$60 for hard copy of the journal andUS$20 for an electronic copy. Electronic access would also be available through thevarious sections, which would join RSAI collectively on behalf of all their members. In
the general discussion that followed it was stressed that the flexible structure was needed
to deal with the marked differences in the way in which regional science is organized in
the three super-regions (North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe).
10. Other business
The next PRSCO Council meeting would be held some time during the World Congressof the RSAI in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, April 14-17, 2004. Note: the RSAI Council
meeting is expected to be held in the afternoon of Thursday 15 April 2004.
D. Plane closed the meeting at 2.00 pm.

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