L'idée de région et le fait urbain The idea of region and the urban fact

Though the region is a multiform or even omniform concept, the concrete region is the privileged framework of spatial thought and action. Now half of the human beings in the world, and more than three quarters of Europeans live in cities. Cities produce more than proportionally to their population and concentrate high-order economic activities, especially high technology production, headquarters, finance and producer services. In the global economy, regional performances appear to be depending on city performances, and most regional, national and world economic interactions are urban interactions. This paper examines the gap between on the one hand the prominence of the concept of region and of the regional division of space, and on the other hand the dominant economic role of cities. The regional bias is deeply and durably rooted, theoretically as well as empirically. Even though the region hides the city, it remains an inescapable spatial scale.