Megaregions reconsidered: urban futures and the future of the urban

Abstract

Please cite the published version.

Governing beyond the metropolis: Placing the rural in city-region development

“…Even within more critical scholarship we are replete with references to the ‘triumph of the city’ (Glaeser, 2011), the ‘resurgent metropolis’ (Scott, 2008), even ‘planetary urbanisation’ (Brenner, 2013). All this is fuelled by a belief in bigger urban-economic units being the key drivers of the global economy, alongside a recognition that the exceptional rate of city expansion into larger (mega) city-regions continues apace (Harrison and Hoyler, 2014b). But while accounts documenting processes of global urban change undoubtedly do much to break down the traditional dichotomy between urban and rural, city and country, it is our contention that even in our increasingly urbanised modern world there remains much to be achieved by tackling the ‘rural question’ within critical urban studies.…”

Megaregions: foundations, frailties, futures

“…By setting out to provide an introduction to what we hope will become a wider debate on megaregions, we have encouraged contributors to be more provocative than they may otherwise be in their academic writing. To facilitate this we asked authors to specifically address three questions in their chapters: (how are megaregions being constructed) and specific interests (why are megaregions being constructed); something which, we argue, requires a more political and more historical perspective on megaregions (Harrison and Hoyler, 2015). (Scott, 2001a, p. 814) 1 million 27.9 million Global >300 Scott (2001aScott ( , 2001b Mega-city region "[A] series of anything between 10 and 50 cities and towns, physically separate but functionally networked, clustered around one or more larger central cities, and drawing enormous economic strength from a new functional division of labour."…”

Rethinking China’s urban governance: The role of the state in neighbourhoods, cities and regions

“…Under the globalisation of economies, advanced market economies in the West have witnessed a new spatial form known as the ‘global city-region’, ‘mega-urban regions’, or ‘megaregions’ (Hall and Pain, 2006; Harrison and Hoyler, 2015; Scott, 2001, 2019). There are different interpretations of the dynamics and associated governance models.…”

“…Rebutting city-regionalism as an outcome of globalisation and agglomeration, Jonas et al (2014) argue that the formation of city-region governance is a process of scale building. Harrison and Hoyler (2015) suggest that megaregion building involves both state and non-state actors. Focussing more explicitly on scale politics, Brenner (2004) conceptualises ‘state spatiality’ at the city-region level.…”

“…The research thus enriches our understanding of city-region formation in terms of both economic and geopolitical dynamics, especially state politics across geographical scales (Jonas, 2020a; Wu, 2020b). In the Western political system, the ‘politics of redistribution’ (Jonas and Moisio, 2018; Harrison and Hoyler, 2015) is a key driving force behind city-regionalism, involving mobilisation of different political jurisdictions. In the Chinese case, we have seen a strong role of the central government as well as active local states in region-building.…”