Settlements variously termed ‘ex-urbs’, ‘edge cities’, ‘technoburbs’ are taken to signal something different from suburbia and as a consequence might be considered post-suburban. Existing literature has focused on defining post-suburbia as a new era and as a new form of settlement space. Whether post-suburbia can also be delimited in terms of its distinctive politics is the open question explored here. The paper begins by considering the need to make urban political theory more tailored to the different settlements that populate the heavily urbanised regions of nations. The paper stresses the structural properties of capitalism that generate differences within the unity of the urbanisation process. It then discusses what is new about a class of post-suburban settlements, concentrating on what the increasing economic gravity of post-suburbia, the difficulty of bounding post-suburban communities and the continuing role of the state imply for understanding urban politics and the reformulation of urban political theory.

For geographers and economists, urban agglomeration remains an enduring feature of the industrial landscape and a perennial source of theoretical and empirical interest. Curiously, despite this long-standing interest, there has been a remarkable tendency to explain agglomeration with reference to Alfred Marshall's trinity of external economies and industrial district model. In this paper, we seek to draw some contrasts in the form and causes of agglomeration. Our discussion proceeds by developing a simple and highly schematic taxonomy of what could be considered the emblematic forms of agglomeration in proto-industrial, industrial and post-industrial urban contexts. Highly simplified though they are, such contrasts highlight the changes in the spatial extent of agglomeration, the contribution of particular industrial sectors and types of external economy and of exports to the process of agglomeration over time. As such, there is an urgent need to reconcile the perspectives of economists and geographers in a renewal of the theory of agglomeration.

PHELPS N. A., MACKINNON D., STONE I. and BRAIDFORD P. (2003) Embedding the multinationals? Institutions and the development of overseas manufacturing affiliates in Wales and North East England, Reg. Studies 37 , 27-40. The impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) upon host regions is a topic of perennial interest within the fields of regional economics, industrial geography and regional development. Much of the early literature here draws negative conclusions regarding the wider indirect impacts of FDI on host regions, pointing to the branch plant syndrome. In light of significant processes of corporate restructuring and the build-up of host region institutional capacities, however, recent literature has claimed that the plants of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are becoming increasingly "embedded' in regional economies. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to provide a critical assessment of the regional "embeddedness' of FDI in Wales and the North East of England. Based upon an extensive survey of overseas-owned manufacturing affiliates in these regions, the paper examines key indicators of MNE embeddedness, and assesses the influence of regional agencies on the embedding process. In general, we find little evidence of increasing embeddedness while the effects of regional differences in institutional capacity on the embedding process appear to be somewhat limited. As such, we suggest that the idea of " extended enclaves' encapsulates some key dimensions of the relationships between MNEs and the economies of peripheral UK regions. PHELPS N. A., MACKINNON D., STONE I. et BRAIDFORD P. (2003) Ancrer les multinationales?: les institutions et le developpement des filiales industrielles etrangeres au pays de Galles et dans le nord-est d'Angleterre, Reg. Studies 37 , 27-40. Les retombees de l'investissement direct etranger (IDE) sur les zones d'accueil est un sujet d'inte ret perpetuel dans les domaines de l'economie re gionale, de la geographie industrielle et de l'amenagement du territoire. Dans une large mesure, la premiere documentation a ce sujet tire des conclusions negatives quant aux retombees indirectes importantes de l'IDE sur les zones d'accueil, faisant allusion au syndrome des etablissements. Cependant, a la lumiere de la restructuration d'entreprise et du developpement des capacites institutionnelles de la zone d'accueil, la documentation recente affirme que les etablissements des multinationales deviennent de plus en plus " ancrees' dans des economies regionales. Sur ce fond, cet article cherche a faire une critique de "l'ancrage' regional de l'IDE au pays de Galles et dans le nord-est d' Angleterre. A partir d'une enquete detaillee aupre s des filiales industrielles a capital etranger situees dans ces regions-la, cet article cherche egalement a examiner les indicateurs cle de l'ancrage des multinationales et a e valuer l'influence des assemblees regionales sur le processus d'ancrage. En regle generale, une augmentation du degre "d'ancrage' s'avere peu evidente alors que les effets des divergences re...

Chinese cities are experiencing rapid urban expansion and rampant land conversions in periurban areas. Has China's suburban growth gone beyond commonly noted`suburbanisation'? To what extent does fast metropolitan growth reflect state entrepreneurialism after economic reform? The authors seek to elaborate further and contextualise Chinese suburban and postsuburban development and examine the underlying dynamics of state entrepreneurialism in the process of metropolitan development. The empirical basis of this research is a case study of the historical development of Yizhuang, an outer suburban new town of Beijing. The city originates from the establishment of the Beijing Economic and Technological Development Zone in 1992, but has passed rapidly through several phases of growth. The pattern of growth reveals both the complexities of adequately defining and delimiting such a growth node within the metropolitan fabric and of the state's intimate involvement in its development and evolution.

We revisit the concept of urban entrepreneurialism to highlight some of its variety. In particular, the present article refocuses discussion on: processes of innovation, bringing geography into dialogue with the literature on innovation in public services; normative questions surrounding the ends to which urban entrepreneurship is turned; and the need for analysis to go beyond the territorial traps of the nation and the city to consider how urban entrepreneurialism articulates with the national state and is projected internationally. We distinguish urban managerialism from the new urban managerialism, urban diplomacy, urban intrapreneurialism and urban speculation, drawing on international examples to highlight the mixed qualities and effects of these varieties of urban entrepreneurialism. In conclusion, we note the limitations of our framework and its relationship to the related ideas of neo-liberalization, financialization and accumulation by dispossession.