Regiones sin fronteras: hacia una nueva política del lugar

The mainstream view of cities and regions is one which continues to conceptualise them as territorial entities: local economic systems, regimes of regulation, a place called home. So, if we are to see cities and regions as spatial formations, they must be summoned up as temporary placements of ever moving material and immanent geographies, as «hauntings» of things that have moved on but left their mark, as situated moments in distanciated networks, as contoured products of the networks that cross a given place. The sum is cities and regions without prescribed or proscribed boundaries. What is in such a war of imaginaries? Why does it matter whether cities and regions are territorially or relationally interpreted? My argument in this paper is that the differences matter politically in quite profound ways, because I believe that very different sensibilities of the political spring out of the two readings of place.