The emergence of artificial intelligence in the regional sciences: a literature review

The article aims to analysing the literature on AI in regional sciences to understand the evolution of the topic in the field. Through a bibliometric analysis, it identifies the most publishing journals, most cited authors and relevant topics analysing more than 800 articles published between 1986 and 2020. Moreover, it reviews the most recent avenues of the literature analysing in-depth the content of 70 articles published in 2020 and 2021 in relevant journals in the field of innovation and regional science. From the analysis of the recent literature, six groups of topics emerge: Industry 4.0, smart cities, big data, AI and related technologies (robotization, IoT, augmented and virtual reality). The results confirm that AI is still an emerging topic in regional science and contribute to identifying the most intriguing issue and future research trends for developing this new research line.