Contenu du sommaire : La science régionale au Québec

The « Belle Province » of the Regional Science in Québec
This special issue aims to show some lights on myths and realities of the France – Quebec relations in terms of Regional Science. Above all language complicities, we are questionning the existence of a specific and original Quebec Regional Science grounded with environment, history, geography, modes of land uses. Analysts in this issue illustrate a real Quebec way of thinking regional problems. Thinkings based on strong personal links with french scientists and schools in a context of north american influences. Quebecers adopt the diversity of readings in Regional Sciences in using a multidisciplinary approach in their analysis. Among them, sociologists are very active and often politically engaged in the community they are observing and modelling. Quebec regional scientists seem to have a preference for empirical findings.

Regional Science in Quebec: a Particular Regionology
In Québec, regional sciences, as many other disciplines, are permanently overlapping, fluidly, constructively and mutually what is knowledge and what is concrete. There is an original symbiosis between what is theory and what is real. This article sets up the backdrop in which the discipline is developing in Quebec since 1950. It tries to put in evidence elements that distinguish Quebec regional sciences than more conventional regional sciences from international community. Some comparisons are considered. Historical review shows how this symbiosis imposes processing diagnostics, therefore politics which again can provide ideas and patterns. Many examples shows how this union between concrete and theory helps to rationally build regional sciences that are always trying to stay transparent and useful for the province.

On the extraordinary diversity (and openness) of regional science in Quebec: origins and prospective
This paper reviews the history of regional science in Quebec, going back to the period before its formal establishment in the province. From the very beginning, regional science in Quebec was influenced by outside actors and ideas. The fathers of Quebec regional science were French and American. Since, varying schools of thought have flourished, some more sociological in tone others economic and quantitative, in the various universities and regions of the province, giving rise to a rich body of literature, still growing. Today, regional science in Quebec, while solidly rooted in its local environment, is now also an avowedly universal research community, whose work appears in the best academic journals. A new generation is knocking at the door. The dominant feature of Quebec regional science remains its openness, not only to other ideas, but also to others. That is its true good fortune and its specificity.

Territorial Development between a Sociology of the Territory and Regional Sciences : the Voice of the GRIDEQ. The groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur le développement régional, de l'Est du Québec (GRIDEQ) illustrates one of the lines of transformation of Québécois social sciences : initially close to the sociology as a discipline, it gradually comes closer to regional science by proposing a social and interdisciplinary analysis of territories in Quebec. This trajectory exhibits a specific interest for the role of collective action within the territorial structures, an initially uncomfortable tension which opens since the 1990's to an intellectual renewal, around a constructivist and dynamic conception of territory, where individuals and social groups remain the essential engines. Within the framework of a new political economy, their mobilizations allow to consider the territories as constructed by community and social movements.

The rise and evolution of regional studies and science in Quebec (1908-2008). Linkages and places
This paper examines the emergence and evolution over a hundred years (1908-2008) of francophone regional studies and science and regional and territorial development in Québec (Canada). Focusing on various dimensions such as their intellectual roots and bearers, their institutional academic bases within geography, economics, sociology, planning, and other fields, their conceptions of science and regional planning and policies, theories and methods, space, time and agency, six configurations have been identified. The spectral analysis proposed of the domain show continuities, and changes, debates and tensions. It is argued that the attention has been concentrated on problems concerning spatial distribution of people, resources and economic activities and linkages between them and ecological, social and economic systems. It is argued that by revisiting publications stemming from various linguistic and social groups of scholars, network of regional scientists and practitioners could foresee new desirable directions to treat problems.

Center and Periphery: the new Quebec model
This paper provides a spatioeconomic analysis of the actual territorial transformation on Quebec space. Writings on this issue are classified in four main components showing centrifugal movements and polycentrism. Analysis of recent decades of data illustrates that center/periphery models are still clearly relevant, but with different designs and forms. The main center becomes progressively multipolair in the Saint-Lawrence valley which also illustrates various areas of different contents, including rural activities. The large periphery is a new nordic front based on natural resources strong demand. Between a prosper center and an expanding periphery in Quebec, an important intermediary zone with economic and social difficulties directly question the public policy in a sense of global spatial equilibrium. In order to respond properly, the role of nordic poles become relevant in a spirit of grasping diffusion effects of the main center and giving limits to the incresing northen wealth in greatest erosion.

The Geography of innovation behaviour in Quebec: From European territories to Canadian space?
The geography of innovation is often analysed from the perspective of its association with territory. However, recent research looking at Quebec shows that the nature of innovation and the propensity to innovate vary with distance from metropolitan areas. This paper proposes a discussion, followed by an empirical analysis, of the geography of innovative behaviour amongst Quebec's manufacturing establishments. An underlying question concerns the possibility that some concepts and approaches in regional science differ between Canada and Europe. The results show that innovative behaviour varies across space (with accessibility to interlocutors) and also varies across territory. Only collaborations with private partners reflect no geographic pattern. These analyses tend to support the idea that the concepts used – finite territories or continuous distance – are universal (or at least relevant in both Europe and Canada), but that the orientation of empirical research – and therefore the research questions asked – are influenced by local particularities.

Rural regions in Quebec: toward a sustainable territorial development model
Quebec is a new society where we can study the models of settlement. The spatial pattern is divided between one central region and various intermediary and peripheral regions and those last ones seemed disconnected to our metropolis. Three pattern of rural settlement as dynamics of regional development characterise the Quebec rural history : the development by the big foreign enterprise, the development par the small owners of the land and the development par the State. From those patterns, a strong collective consciousness has generated various representations of what is the appropriate model of regional development. Considering the limited success of those top-down regional development policies, a new approach based of place-based development and local actors capacity-building is emerging and we will show that the recent Quebec rural policy is designed in that perspective and it is good example of an innovative public policy offering a genuine model of sustainable territorial development.

Community-Economic Development in Québec: Three Decades of Contributions
In Quebec, the term "local development" has replaced the term "community economic development", which was related, during the 1970s, to initiatives having a double objective, social and economic, put forward by stakeholders who were affected by economic circumstances and who were willing to assume a greater responsibility for their immediate future. We aim to demonstrate, through the analysis of three decades of writing contributions from Quebec activists and academics, that, while they have affinities and closely related objectives, they can be divided in two categories. In one category are the advocates of community economic development, considered as a “progressive approach”, with the cooperative and voluntary sectors as building blocks. In the second category are the supporters of private local entrepreneurship, who represent the so-called “liberal approach”. We also attempt to provide a progress report on theorizing or modeling efforts.

Regional Land Use Planning in Québec, the Poor Relative of Regional Sciences
Although planning gives the illusion to benefit from a favoured status, it barely helps in fact to face Quebec's major development challenges. Confined to the local scale of its practice since the end of the 1970's, planning is mostly related to macro zoning activities, based on the production of municipal plans and regulations. This restricted vision explains, in some ways, the lack of interest among regional scientists. Nevertheless, the actual changes in economic geography and the organisation of territorial resources around renewal and revival appear to give new arguments in favour of planning as a practice as well as an object of science.