Benchmarking future city-regions beyond nation-states

• Published in: Regional Studies, Regional Science
• Main Author: Calzada, I
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Taylor and Francis 2017
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376.2015.1046908; https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f128ce0d-4298-4fee-953f-1ceac604cdfb

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.