The future of city-regions: Comparative territorial benchmarking

• Main Author: Calzada, I
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9adcc9c0-a209-4d3e-b05d-c810308d1f51

What this paper is trying to highlight is how City-Regions are being actively constructed (Harrison, 2012), where they are being mobilised in support of, or in opposition to, particular territorial development models and strategies. Hence, this paper contributes to debates about the meaning and the understanding of the dynamics of actively constructed term of the “City-Region”, by proposing an Analytical Systemic Framework after reviewing the literature of the main key authors. The Analytical Systemic Framework called “The Future of the City-Regions” (FCR) consists of 5-Systems: URBS (Urban System), CYBER (Relational System), CIVITAS (Socio-Cultural System), POLIS (Socio-Political System) and DEMOS (Democratic System). It discusses: What does the term “City-Region” mean? Does it ”capture some of the most distinctive aspects of contemporary global urbanisation, and certainly some of the most pressing challenges and contradictions of urban life in the twenty-first century” (Robinson, 2013)? How can City-Region’s past experiences be evaluated? Is City-Region a relevant term in order to locate it in the comparative urban political economy’s challenges? How can urban regional evidence be identified in an Analytical 5-System Framework (hereinafter FCR is used as an abbreviation of Future of City-Regions)? Can we talk about just one model of City-Region? How can we develop a robust theoretical diagnosis Framework (FCR)? And as a consequence, can we look into comparative facts and evidence about particular territorial development strategies (hereinafter CTB is used as an abbreviation of Comparative Territorial Benchmarking) within the results of the work-inprogress empirical fieldwork in the chosen case-studies, such as Basque, Dublin, Portland, Iceland, Oresund and Liverpool/Manchester? To sum up, among the cases (CTB), the paper will show some empirical evidence for such diverse territorial development models and strategies that can be analysed through the lenses of the 5-System Analytical Framework (FCR). This is a ...