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"Urban Geography a comprehensive introduction to a variety of issues relating to contemporary urban geography, including patterns and processes of urbanization, urban development, urban planning, and life experiences in modern cities. Reveals both the diversity of ordinary urban geographies and the networks, flows and relations which increasingly connect cities and urban spaces at the global scale Uses the city as a lens for proposing and developing critical concepts which show how wider social processes, relations, and power structures are changing Considers the experiences, lives, practices, struggles, and words of ordinary urban residents and marginalized social groups rather than exclusively those of urban elites Shows readers how to develop critical perspectives on dominant neoliberal representations of the city and explore the great diversity of urban worlds "--

This paper argues that it is intellectually unsustainable to separate the new economic geography of city-regionalism from its geopolitical context. The neo-liberal competition state is centrally implicated in how the city-region scale is politically orchestrated so as to bolster international competitiveness. Yet the diversity of national and sub-national forms of city-regionalism cannot be attributed to economic development considerations separately from ongoing struggles around the collective provision of social and physical infrastructure. Drawing upon selected examples from the United States, the paper demonstrates how city-regionalism expresses the contingent geopolitics of capitalism. Its overall aim is to advance theoretical knowledge both of the internal political geography of the competition state and of its external territorial relations. Adapted from the source document.

This study explores the conflicts surrounding school desegregation in Franklin County, Ohio, and how they have been resolved in a way that has facilitated a continuation of suburban residential development despite ongoing resistance to growth from local residents. One condition that has proven important in this case is the existence of developable areas within the city of Columbus that are in suburban school districts."White flight" from the desegregating Columbus School District mainly has been confined to these areas, provoking resistance from existing residents and calls for impact fees, calls that have been opposed by developer interests. The author discusses the ways in which developer interests have exploited the intense jurisdictional fragmentation of the metropolitan area to overcome obstacles to further residential development in suburban areas.

The terms city-region and city-regionalism are today widely used by urban managers, planners, representatives of businesses associations and international organizations, real estate and property developers and state officials and politicians. These terms disclose the complex intertwining of contemporary urbanization, world economy and world politics. In this chapter we first review the economic geographical literature on city-regionalism. Secondly, we interrogate city regionalism as a set of political-administrative and/or geopolitical processes in more detail. We suggest that city-regions should not be understood as discrete spatial units that operate as "agents" or "actor-scales" in themselves. Nor should city-regions be considered as passive backdrops on which economy, politics or social reproduction simply happen. Rather city-regions may be conceptualized as dynamic sites of policy experimentation and political struggle, which are produced from various political processes operating within and around the national state and its institutions. ; Peer reviewed

This article sets out a new conceptual framework for investigating how city regionalism is constituted as a variegated set of geopolitical processes operating within and beyond the national state. Our approach highlights: (1) the different forms of territorial politics through which city regionalism is conjoined with broader visions of the national state; (2) the material and territorial arrangements which support such a conjuncture; and (3) the political actors enabling city regionalism and the national state to come together within a geopolitical frame of reference. ; This article sets out a new conceptual framework for investigating how city regionalism is constituted as a variegated set of geopolitical processes operating within and beyond the national state. Our approach highlights: (1) the different forms of territorial politics through which city regionalism is conjoined with broader visions of the national state; (2) the material and territorial arrangements which support such a conjuncture; and (3) the political actors enabling city regionalism and the national state to come together within a geopolitical frame of reference. ; Peer reviewed

Studies suggest that urban fiscal crises trigger the institutional separation of strategic services from general purpose municipal functions. Traditional reformists have highlighted the economic benefits of regional approaches. Global austerity has created fiscal problems for central cities and suburbs alike, transforming the motives for regional solutions. This paper examines how the City of Detroit engineered a new regional arrangement with the surrounding suburbs to raise debt for the delivery of mass transit infrastructure. It represents a dual 'spatial fix' in the form of (i) a 'state territorial fix' providing fiscally stressed municipalities access to municipal bond markets and (ii) a 'speculative spatial fix' that benefits the Detroit growth coalition by linking regional mass transit to the prospect of land-use intensification. © The Author 2014.

The ongoing neoliberalization of local and regional economies is contributing to quite profound changes in the ways resources, land uses, and nature are managed. Consider in this regard the changing role of the state1 within North America and Europe. For a good part of the 20th century, state intervention in land‐use planning, resource management, and nature conservation was motivated primarily by national development goals, including a desire to ensure the territorial‐economic integrity of the nation state. Although there is always variation within countries resulting from such factors as the uneven spatial distribution of natural resources, the variety of arrangements for allocating powers and responsibilities among territorial units of government, and different cultural attitudes toward nature, there was nonetheless a discernible trend toward the nationalization (Europe) or federalization (United States) of resource management, land‐use planning, and nature conservation. At the very least, in most countries the state played a strong coordinating, regulatory, and financial role in relation to the management of nature within its territory.

Introduces a mini-symposium on the re-regulation of resource sectors at the regional and local scales. The articles in the symposium illustrate some of the ways geographers are attempting to grapple with the complex unfolding relationships between nature, economy, society and the state at the subnational scale. Argues that geographical research, deliberately focusing on the subnational despite current predilections for all things global, can help to challenge some taken-for-granted categories and assumptions in the social sciences regarding such issues as the relationship between society, economy, state and nature and, in particular, the current interest in "environmental governance". (Quotes from original text)