Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy

Description:
There are now more than three hundred city-regions around the world with populations greater than one million. These city-regions are expanding vigorously, and they present many new and deep challenges to researchers and policy-makers in both the more developed and less developed parts of the world. The processes of global economic integration and accelerated urban growth make traditional planning and policy strategies in these regions increasingly inadequate, while more effective approaches remain largely in various stages of hypothesis and experimentation. 'Global City-Regions' represents a multifaceted effort to deal with the many different issues raised by these developments. It seeks at once to define the question of global city-regions and to describe the internal and external dynamics that shape them; it proposes a theorization of global city-regions based on their economic and political responses to intensifying levels of globalization; and it offers a number of policy insights into the severe social problems that confront global city-regions as they come face to face with an economically and politically neoliberal world. At a moment when globalization is increasingly subject to critical scrutiny in many different quarters, this book provides a timely overview of its effects on urban and regional development, one of its most important (but perhaps least understood) corollaries. The book also offers a series of nuanced visions of alternative possible futures.

Review:
... some must-read pieces ... this important book brings the concept of the global city-region into view. At the same time, it sows seeds of doubt about the concept's usefulness and applicability. Area A good-quality production with many eminent contributors ... will be of interest to urban scholars. Urban Studies

Table of Contents:
Introduction; PART I: OPENING ARGUMENTS; 1. Global City-Regions; PART II: ON PRACTICAL QUESTIONS OF GLOBALIZATION AND CITY-REGION DEVELOPMENT; 2. How to Invite Prosperity from the Global Economy into a Region; 3. The World Bank and Global City-Regions: Reaching the Poor; 4. Quebec in an Era of Global City-Regions; PART III: THE GLOBAL CITY-REGION: A NEW GEOGRAPHIC PHENOMENON?; 5. Global City-Regions in the Twenty-First Century; 6. Global Cities and Global City-Regions: A Comparison; 7. The Economic Role and Spatial Contradictions of Global City-Regions: The Functional, Cognitive, and Evolutionary Context; 8. Intercity Networks in a Globalizing Era; PART IV: THE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES OF GLOBAL CITY-REGIONS; 9. Regions and the New Economics of Competition; 10. Ontario as a North American Region-State, Toronto as a Global City-Region: Responding to the NAFTA Challenge; PART V: GLOBAL CITY-REGIONS IN AFRICA, ASIA, AND LATIN AMERICA: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CHALLENGES; 11. Local Governance and Social Diversity in the Developing World: New Challenges for Globalizing City-Regions; 12. Innovation and Risk-Taking: Urban Governance in Latin America; 13. Intercity Competition and the Question of Economic Resilience: Globalization and Crisis in Asia; 14. Repositioning of City-Regions: Korea after the Crisis; PART VI: SOCIAL INEQUALITIES AND IMMIGRANT NICHES IN GLOBAL CITY-REGIONS; 15. Inequality in Global City-Regions; 16. The Immigrant Niche in Global City-Regions: Concept, Patterns, Controversy; PART VII: QUESTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP; 17. Urban Citizenship and Globalization; 18. Istanbul's Conflicting Paths to Citizenship: Islamization and Globalization; PART VIII: THE NEW COLLECTIVE ORDER OF GLOBAL CITY-REGIONS; 19. Governing Cities and Regions: Territorial Restructuring in a Global Age; 20. Lessons from Silicon Valley: Governance in a Global City-Region; 21. Local Governance and Conflict Management: Reflections on a Brazilian Cluster; PART IX: CODA: ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES; 22. Environmental Sustainability and Services in Developing Global City-Regions