Governing Cities and Regions: Territorial Restructuring in a Global Age

Abstract

Abstract One of the most striking features of the late twentieth century world is the rise of cities and regions as important spaces and as actors in national and global politics. This is all the more remarkable in that it defies the wisdom of generations of modernization theorists who argued that there was an inexorable trend to inte gration within consolidated nation-states. Equally it calls into question some of the theories of globalization. Both modernists and postmodernists have argued that globalization and European integration will mark the “end of territory” (Badie 1995), superseding both the nation-state and the territorial units within it. In a world of instant communication, free trade, frictionless capital fiows, and global culture, this would seem a logical outcome. Yet once again the integrationists have been confounded. Instead of a homogeneous world order, we are faced with a resurgence of regionalist movements, minority nationalisms, and the renais sance of cities as global actors. Observers have ceased to regard this conjunction of globalization and regionalization as a paradox and to appreciate that both are related to each other as the nation-state faces twin pressures from above and below. Political, economic, and social space is restructuring, at various territorial levels and new types of regulation are emerging.

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