IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/tvecsg/v113y2022i5p435-449.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

City Diplomacy Beyond Metrocentricity: The Case of Flanders

Author

Listed:
  • Jorn Koelemaij
  • Ben Derudder

Abstract

City diplomacy is a rapidly growing and increasingly researched phenomenon, but to date most research has focused on major cities and eye‐catching city networks. This paper extends this literature by examining city diplomacy practices in Flanders, Belgium, a region defined by its many mid‐sized and smaller cities. Drawing on a combination of an exploratory survey and indepth interviews, five main themes are discussed: (i) internal organization, (ii) bilateral city diplomacy, (iii) multilateral city diplomacy, (iv) strategies and (v) motivations. We conclude that Flemish cities' city diplomacy broadly align with international trends, with their approaches increasingly centred on economic and financial motives. However, while some of the larger cities join a range of formal city networks to gain policy inspiration and international visibility, smaller cities' opportunities are much more limited and their main goal is often to get involved in projects that are funded by the European Union.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorn Koelemaij & Ben Derudder, 2022. "City Diplomacy Beyond Metrocentricity: The Case of Flanders," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 113(5), pages 435-449, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:tvecsg:v:113:y:2022:i:5:p:435-449
    DOI: 10.1111/tesg.12531
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12531
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/tesg.12531?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kathryn Davidson & Lars Coenen & Michele Acuto & Brendan Gleeson, 2019. "Reconfiguring urban governance in an age of rising city networks: A research agenda," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(16), pages 3540-3555, December.
    2. Michele Acuto & Benjamin Leffel, 2021. "Understanding the global ecosystem of city networks," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(9), pages 1758-1774, July.
    3. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064, Decembrie.
    4. Tim Bunnell & Anant Maringanti, 2010. "Practising Urban and Regional Research beyond Metrocentricity," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 415-420, June.
    5. Jochem de Vries, 2015. "Planning and Culture Unfolded: The Cases of Flanders and the Netherlands," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(11), pages 2148-2164, November.
    6. Jennifer Robinson, 2002. "Global and world cities: a view from off the map," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 531-554, September.
    7. Susanne Heeg & Britta Klagge & Juürgen Ossenbruügge, 2003. "Metropolitan cooperation in Europe: Theoretical issues and perspectives for urban networking 1," European Planning Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(2), pages 139-153, March.
    8. Michele Acuto & Mehrnaz Ghojeh, 2019. "C40 Cities Inside Out," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(4), pages 709-711, November.
    9. Vincent Beal & Gilles Pinson, 2014. "When Mayors Go Global: International Strategies, Urban Governance and Leadership," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(1), pages 302-317, January.
    10. Hillary Angelo & David Wachsmuth, 2020. "Why does everyone think cities can save the planet?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(11), pages 2201-2221, August.
    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. Manuel B. Aalbers, 2023. "TESG Paper Award and Recent Editorial Changes," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 114(3), pages 175-176, July.
    2. Jorn Koelemaij & Sam Taveirne & Ben Derudder, 2023. "An economic geography perspective on city diplomacy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(6), pages 995-1012, May.

    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. Jorn Koelemaij & Sam Taveirne & Ben Derudder, 2023. "An economic geography perspective on city diplomacy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(6), pages 995-1012, May.
    2. Partha Mukhopadhyay & Marie‐Hélène Zérah & Eric Denis, 2020. "Subaltern Urbanization: Indian Insights for Urban Theory," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 582-598, July.
    3. Tim Bunnell & Daniel P. S. Goh & Chee-Kien Lai & C. P. Pow, 2012. "Introduction: Global Urban Frontiers? Asian Cities in Theory, Practice and Imagination," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(13), pages 2785-2793, October.
    4. Renaud Payre, 2010. "The Importance of Being Connected. City Networks and Urban Government: Lyon and Eurocities (1990–2005)," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 260-280, June.
    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. Gordon MacLeod & Martin Jones, 2011. "Renewing Urban Politics," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(12), pages 2443-2472, September.
    7. Josh Lepawsky & Grace Akese & Mostaem Billah & Creighton Conolly & Chris McNabb, 2015. "Composing Urban Orders from Rubbish Electronics: Cityness and the Site Multiple," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 185-199, March.
    8. Michele Acuto & Benjamin Leffel, 2021. "Understanding the global ecosystem of city networks," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(9), pages 1758-1774, July.
    9. Dan He & Zhijing Sun & Peng Gao, 2019. "Development of Economic Integration in the Central Yangtze River Megaregion from the Perspective of Urban Network Evolution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-18, September.
    10. Michele Acuto, 2014. "Dubai in the ‘Middle’," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(5), pages 1732-1748, September.
    11. Andrew Harris, 2012. "The Metonymic Urbanism of Twenty-first-century Mumbai," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(13), pages 2955-2973, October.
    12. John Lauermann, 2014. "Competition through Interurban Policy Making: Bidding to Host Megaevents as Entrepreneurial Networking," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(11), pages 2638-2653, November.
    13. Anne Bach Nielsen & Marielle Papin, 2021. "The hybrid governance of environmental transnational municipal networks: Lessons from 100 Resilient Cities," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(4), pages 667-685, June.
    14. Swayam Prava Das, 2023. "City connectivity via global intra‐firm linkages: An analysis of Indian cities," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 312-330, March.
    15. Ben Derudder & Christof Parnreiter, 2014. "Introduction: The Interlocking Network Model for Studying Urban Networks: Outline, Potential, Critiques, and Ways Forward," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 105(4), pages 373-386, September.
    16. Adi Weidenfeld & Nick Clifton, 2023. "The Evolution of Transnational Knowledge Networks of Cities: Outlining a Future Research Agenda," Working Papers 2023-14, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    17. Susan Parnell & Edgar Pieterse, 2016. "Translational Global Praxis: Rethinking Methods and Modes of African Urban Research," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 236-246, January.
    18. Junjun Niu & Chunmei Mao, 2023. "The Policy Evolution Characteristics of Regional Integration Development in the Yangtze River Delta: A Quantitative Analysis Based on Policy Texts from 2003 to 2022," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(20), pages 1-27, October.
    19. Özgür Sayın & Michael Hoyler & John Harrison, 2022. "Doing comparative urbanism differently: Conjunctural cities and the stress-testing of urban theory," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(2), pages 263-280, February.
    20. Katharine A. Robb & Michelle LaPointe & Kathryn Hemsing & Grant Anderson & James Anderson & Jorrit de Jong, 2023. "Inter‐city collaboration: Why and how cities work, learn and advocate together," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(5), pages 663-675, November.

    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:tvecsg:v:113:y:2022:i:5:p:435-449. 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=0040-747X .

    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.