IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v39y2015i2p382-389.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

If Urban Regions are the Answer, What is the Question? Thoughts on the European Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Mariona Tomàs

Abstract

This essay contributes to the current debate in the field of critical urban and regional studies on the meanings of the ‘regional’ and the ‘urban’. From a political science perspective, we focus on the European case. Firstly, we argue that the conception of the regional scale is not the same in various languages and traditions. Regions in Europe carry meanings and connotations that are not always easy to translate without losing their specific histories. Secondly, our analysis of contemporary debates on the ‘regional’ in the field of urban studies reveals that both practitioners and academics consider the regional scale mainly as a functional space, as the space for economic competitiveness. However, urban regions are also to be regarded as spaces for social and political mobilization. I argue that the political dimension of the ‘regional’ deserves more attention and that further research needs to be undertaken in this respect.

Suggested Citation

  • Mariona Tomàs, 2015. "If Urban Regions are the Answer, What is the Question? Thoughts on the European Experience," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 382-389, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:39:y:2015:i:2:p:382-389
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12177
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064, Decembrie.
    2. Mark Purcell, 2007. "City‐Regions, Neoliberal Globalization and Democracy: A Research Agenda," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(1), pages 197-206, March.
    3. Gordon MacLeod, 2001. "New Regionalism Reconsidered: Globalization and the Remaking of Political Economic Space," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 804-829, December.
    4. Michael Keating, 1998. "The New Regionalism in Western Europe," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1193.
    5. Alan Harding, 2007. "Taking City Regions Seriously? Response to Debate on ‘City‐Regions: New Geographies of Governance, Democracy and Social Reproduction’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 443-458, June.
    6. Joe Painter, 2008. "Cartographic Anxiety and the Search for Regionality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 40(2), pages 342-361, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maté-Sánchez-Val, Mariluz & López-Hernandez, Fernando & Mur-Lacambra, Jesús, 2017. "How do neighboring peer companies influence SMEs’ financial behavior?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 104-114.
    2. Lackowska Marta & Norris Donald F., 2017. "Metropolitan governance (or not!) in Poland and the United States," Miscellanea Geographica. Regional Studies on Development, Sciendo, vol. 21(3), pages 114-123, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simon Parker & Michael Harloe, 2015. "What Place For The Region? Reflections on the Regional Question and the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 361-371, March.
    2. John Harrison, 2008. "Stating the Production of Scales: Centrally Orchestrated Regionalism, Regionally Orchestrated Centralism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(4), pages 922-941, December.
    3. Tassilo Herrschel, 2013. "Competitiveness AND Sustainability: Can ‘Smart City Regionalism’ Square the Circle?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(11), pages 2332-2348, August.
    4. Stijn Oosterlynck & Yuri Kazepov & Andreas Novy & Pieter Cools & Eduardo Barberis & Florian Wukovitsch & Tatiana Saruis & Bernhard Leubolt, 2013. "The butterfly and the elephant: local social innovation, the welfare state and new poverty dynamics," ImPRovE Working Papers 13/03, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    5. lain Deas & Alex Lord, 2006. "From a New Regionalism to an Unusual Regionalism? The Emergence of Non-standard Regional Spaces and Lessons for the Territorial Reorganisation of the State," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(10), pages 1847-1877, September.
    6. Enrico Gualini & Carola Fricke, 2019. "‘Who governs’ Berlin’s metropolitan region? The strategic-relational construction of metropolitan scale in Berlin–Brandenburg’s economic development policies," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(1), pages 59-80, February.
    7. Gordon Macleod & Martin Jones, 2007. "Territorial, Scalar, Networked, Connected: In What Sense a 'Regional World'?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(9), pages 1177-1191.
    8. Kees Terlouw & Bouke van Gorp, 2014. "Layering Spatial Identities: The Identity Discourses of New Regions," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(4), pages 852-866, April.
    9. Mark Goodwin & Martin Jones & Rhys Jones, 2005. "Devolution, constitutional change and economic development: Explaining and understanding the new institutional geographies of the British state," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(4), pages 421-436.
    10. Frédéric Varone & Stéphane Nahrath & David Aubin & Jean-David Gerber, 2013. "Functional regulatory spaces," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 46(4), pages 311-333, December.
    11. Roger Keil & Jean-Paul D. Addie, 2015. "‘It's Not Going to be Suburban, It's Going to be All Urban’: Assembling Post-suburbia in the Toronto and Chicago Regions," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 892-911, September.
    12. Harrison, John, 2012. "Towards the new "regional world"?," Arbeitsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Growe, Anna & Heider, Katharina & Lamker, Christian & Paßlick, Sandra & Terfrüchte, Thomas (ed.), Polyzentrale Stadtregionen - Die Region als planerischer Handlungsraum, volume 3, pages 10-21, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    13. Joe Painter, 2008. "Cartographic Anxiety and the Search for Regionality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 40(2), pages 342-361, February.
    14. Michael Buser, 2014. "Democratic Accountability and Metropolitan Governance: The Case of South Hampshire, UK," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(11), pages 2336-2353, August.
    15. Sean Markey & Sarah-Patricia Breen & Kelly Vodden & Jen Daniels, 2015. "Evidence of Place: Becoming a Region in Rural Canada," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 874-891, September.
    16. Andrew Donaldson, 2006. "Performing Regions: Territorial Development and Cultural Politics in a Europe of the Regions," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 38(11), pages 2075-2092, November.
    17. DURAND Frédéric & LAMOUR Christian, 2013. "Les réseaux de la gouvernance transfrontalière : une centralité changeante du pouvoir étatique ? L'étude de l’Eurométropole de Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai," LISER Working Paper Series 2013-14, Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).
    18. James Wesley Scott, 2007. "Smart Growth as Urban Reform: A Pragmatic 'Recoding' of the New Regionalism," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(1), pages 15-35, January.
    19. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, 2007. "The Rise of the “City-region” Concept and its Development Policy Implications," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(8), pages 1025-1046, December.
    20. Keith Jacobs, 2004. "Waterfront Redevelopment: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Policy-making Process within the Chatham Maritime Project," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 41(4), pages 817-832, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:39:y:2015:i:2:p:382-389. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.