Ciudades-región en Europa: innovación, aprendizaje y nueva gobernanza territorial

This article analyzes changes in territorial governance Europe as part of the European Union’s evolving multi-level polity and the re-scaling of the state highlighting the tensions and dilemmas derived from the simultaneity of the processes of sub-national devolution and the creation of supra-national structures of governance. First, the text examines the «regional scale» and assesses its significance in what is called the «multi-level polity» in the European Union. Second, it explores the potential and limits of regional action in the field of innovation in the context of Europe’s less favoured regions stressing its significance for regional regeneration. And, third, it discusses the sustainable development strategy designed by the Welsh Government in the United Kingdom to point to the need both for a new metric for regional development in Wales to transcend the narrow economistic thinking that has dominated post-war regeneration policy, as well as articulate an effective interdependent and «joined-up» gover nance among the different spatial scales: local, regional, national and supranational.