This second volume of proceedings of the International Conference on Regional Science, Energy and Environment (Louvain, May 1975) contains papers related to general and partial equilibrium models of regional and urban development, in which natural and human resources playa dominant role. It need not be stressed that environmental factors and resource management have,to some extent, been neglected in postwar economic research. Unfortunately, a world-wide energy crisis or more local environmental disruptions were necessary to draw the economist's attention on the increasing imbalance between man and environment. The topics treated in this volume reflect the shift in economic research which has taken place since the early seventies. They can be classified roughly into 4 fields. The first field deals with a welfare approach to environmental deterioration. The second area covers models of resource allocation that contain environmental constraints. The third class of problems focuses on the relationship between environment and urban development. Finally, some methodological papers are included that explore new areas in regional and ~nterregional model building. Klaassen opens this volume with a paper on the impact of rising energy prices on the structure of regional development and environment, He analyses the change in size of all potentials and the consequent decrease in the volume of traffic. Besides these short-run influences, a :reallocat{o~ of households and firms may be expected in the long-run.

For the last three decades, space has become a significant dimension in social science analysis. In many developed countries, economic growth is slowing down, and in some cases restrained, due to environmental considerations, and the real question is the optimum spread of development over space rather than the growth over time. In the developing countries, limited and uneven distribution of population and resources, and the existence of heterogenous groups, highlighted the need of balanced regional development. The energy cl sis and the realization that energy resources are very limited and unequally distributed have further emphasized its importance. The expected impact and relocation due to energy shortages will have a crucial spatial dimension since manufacturing and service activities dependent on energy are concentrated in a few metropolitan regions connected by transportation, 'communication and cultural factors. Regional environ ment is also dependent on the spatial juxtaposition of activities and energy use. The papers included in this volume address some of these considerations. They were presented in the International Conference on Regional Science, Energy and Environment, held at Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven, Belgium, on May 1975. A second volume titled Environment, Regional Science and Interregional Modeling published also by Springer-Verlag contains research papers related to environment and space. This book does not concern all facets of the energy situation. In fact, contributions on major oil producing countries, U. S. S. R., East European and developing countries are not represented."