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

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  • 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.

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  • 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
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12177
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Brenner, Neil, 2004. "New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199270064.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. Joe Painter, 2008. "Cartographic Anxiety and the Search for Regionality," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 40(2), pages 342-361, February.
    5. 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.
    6. Michael Keating, 1998. "The New Regionalism in Western Europe," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1193.
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