Introduction: the rationale Changes in social, economic, and spatial patterns of urban regions over recent decades have led to polymorphic urban landscapes and new perceptions of city-regional spaces. Cities are evolving physically and functionally through external interactions into dispersed and multinuclear urban configurations that are quite distinct from the traditional urban hierarchy. With processes of urban transformation still unfolding, new perceptions of coherence and identity at the city-regional level have not yet crystallised. Many urban regions are reevaluating quality-of-life issues (economic, social, cultural, and environmental qualities) in the unsettled and fragmentary context of the emergent landscapes. These initiatives are part of a wider`cultural turn' in planning, understood as planning that makes reference to the cultural sense of a place (Montgomery, 1990). We define culture as shared codes of meaning or common sense. Cultural symbols are the objects, projects, metaphors, and so on that refer to a certain way of life (Geertz, 1975;Keesing, 1974; Swidler, 1986).An increasing range of stakeholders, from planners and urban designers to private sector developers and civic groups, are marking processes of change in symbolic ways in order to profile the ongoing transformation of cities. A variety of symbolic expressions is generated to accentuate the transition processes, such as the shaping of highly visible landmarks and design objects, the use of linguistic tropes (in particular metaphors) in strategic frames of planning, the expression of cultural markers in marketing strategies, the highlighting of new public spaces, the occurence of major urban manifestations and public events, and so on. The initiatives intend to enhance the social meaning (ie to amplify or magnify its meaning and create something more than is now apparent) of the transforming spaces in day-to-day perception by employing symbolic markers of change. Metaphors of planning and design (such as the Pearl River Delta symbolising the coherence of the metropolitan region of Hong Kong, Shenzen, and Guangzhou or the Flemish Diamond symbolising the polycentric city network in Flanders) and cultural landmarks (such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao,

The emergence of new urban configurations -marked by enlarged scale, polycentrism and strong cities -often conflicts with the settled institutions of the 'old' city, with its hierarchical, centripetal development model. This model is challenged through the autonomous locational decisions of commercial and private actors, and sometimes through planning initiatives that aim to establish new planning spaces adapting to this new spatial reality, but despite this ongoing challenge, traditional conceptions of cities seem to prevail. This article offers a sociological-institutional approach to analysing how the institutions of the 'old' city are challenged, looking at the role of symbolic markers in planning strategies as an explanation for the institutional activation of new perceptions of the changing city. The urbanised zone of the Manchester and Liverpool city regions in the UK -where a massive investment strategy by a private-sector company has presented a new vision that challenges the entrenched positions of the two core cities -provides an excellent case study for investigating how symbolic markers spark a conflict over the meaning of two city regions that are closely linked but have thus far worked in isolation. The degree to which the meaning of existing institutions is reflected in the strategy is crucial for the success potential of establishing new governance spaces.

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The change in the form of cities over the last few decades into amorphous patterns classified as Zwischenstadt (in‐between city) has encouraged many urban regions to launch planning strategies that address the urbanized landscape in city‐regions. Symbolic markers are used to signify spatial transformation and mobilize various public and private stakeholders (including citizens). As the mindset of people is institutionalized in old perceptions of urban life, strategies employing symbolic markers may be thought of as attempts at institutional innovation. I will argue that the imagination of new regional spaces in the urban fringe is often voluntaristic. Instituting imaginative reconstructions of the Zwischenstadt through symbolic markers relies on a very precise notion of institutional meaning in practice. Using the Rotterdam Rijnmond area in the Netherlands and its attempt to develop new images of the regional urban landscape as an example, I will show that the transformative potential of symbolic markers depends on the way existing cultural and institutional practices are recombined.RésuméAu cours des dernières décennies, les villes ont vu leur forme évoluer selon des schémas amorphes appelés Zwischenstadt (entre‐ville), poussant de nombreuses régions métropolitaines à entreprendre des stratégies d’aménagement pour résoudre la question de leur paysage urbanisé. Les «marqueurs symboliques» permettent de mettre en évidence la transformation spatiale et de mobiliser divers acteurs publics et privés (dont les habitants). Étant donné la vision normalisée de la population selon des perceptions anciennes de la vie urbaine, on peut considérer les stratégies qui recourent à ces marqueurs comme des tentatives d’innovation institutionnelle. Imaginer de nouveaux espaces régionaux à la périphérie urbaine est souvent une initiative volontariste. Par ailleurs, instituer les reconstructions imaginatives de la Zwischenstadt au moyen de marqueurs symboliques repose sur une notion très précise de la signification institutionnelle dans des situations pratiques. À partir du cas hollandais de la région de Rotterdam‐Rijnmond et de ses efforts d’élaboration de nouvelles images de son paysage métropolitain, cette étude montre que le potentiel de transformation des marqueurs symboliques dépend de la façon dont les pratiques culturelles et institutionnelles existantes sont recombinées.

Cities in the UK have undergone an urban renaissance since the late 1990s, when New Labour started an initiative of the same name. However, the effects of urban growth have been limited mainly to the cores of second-tier cities, creating new challenges in the urban fringe of city regions and for cities outside the major agglomerations. In this article, we examine the process of reurbanisation in the Manchester and Liverpool city regions and to take a closer look at on one of the local authorities in the fringe of these city regions which is trying to grapple with the challenges posed by a new urban age. We find increasing evidence that places in the spatial in-between of urban regions face particular challenges as a result of the urban renaissance, with the already problematic areas requiring increased attention to avoid structural urban problems similar to that of the inner urban areas in the past.  * This article belongs to a special issue on reurbanisation

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