Journal Article

Benchmarking Future City-Regions beyond Nation-States

Published 9 June 2015 / By COMPAS Communications

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This paper argues that new city-regional configurations are emerging and establishing a regional order beyond nation-states, both as a consequence of certain nationalistic political devolution claims and due to the economic renewal and nation-state re-scaling trend advocated by the ‘new regionalism’. Based on the author’s findings, which elucidate the distinction between four nationalistic (Scotland, Catalonia, Basque Country and Iceland) and four non-nationalistic city-region cases (Oresund, Liverpool/Manchester, Dublin and Portland), this paper highlights that there is no single model for city-regions and emphasizes that this trend has become increasingly complex due to its wide range of causes: political devolution and nation-state rescaling processes (Scotland, Catalonia, Basque Country, Liverpool and Manchester), flow of commuters (Oresund), democratic regeneration (Iceland), and economic renewal (Dublin and Portland).

This paper benchmarks eight city-regions by systemically investigating their social innovation processes to understand better their dynamics beyond their respective nation-states.

Keywords: City-regionsnation-statessocial innovationdevolution

Citation

Calzada, I. (2015), Benchmarking Future City-Regions beyond Nation-States. RSRS Regional Studies Regional Science 2(1): 350-361. DOI: 10.1080/21681376.2015.1046908.