ABSTRACT: What this paper is trying to highlight is how City-Regions are being actively constructed (Harrison, 2012), where they are being mobilised in support of, or in opposition to, particular territorial development models and strategies. Hence, this paper contributes to debates about the meaning and the understanding of the dynamics of actively constructed term of the “City-Region”, by proposing an Analytical Systemic Framework after reviewing the literature of the main key authors. The Analytical Systemic Framework called “The Future of the City-Regions” (FCR) consists of 5-Systems: URBS (Urban System), CYBER (Relational System), CIVITAS (Socio-Cultural System), POLIS (Socio-Political System) and DEMOS (Democratic System).

1.
The Future of City-Regions (FCR)
<>
Comparative Territorial Benchmarking (CTB)
Dr Igor Calzada
University of Oxford (UK), Future of Cities Programme, COMPAS
&
Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science
http://www.about.me/icalzada
http://www.igorcalzada.com
http://www.cityregions.org
Winter
Conference
2013
–
Mobilising
Regions:
Territorial
Strategies
for
Growth
Call
for
Papers:
Accepted
paper.
Regional
Studies
Association
22nd
November
2013,
London
ABSTRACT:
What this paper is trying to highlight is how City-Regions are being actively
constructed (Harrison, 2012), where they are being mobilised in support of, or in opposition
to, particular territorial development models and strategies.
Hence, this paper contributes to debates about the meaning and the understanding
of the dynamics of actively constructed term of the “City-Region”, by proposing an Analytical
Systemic Framework after reviewing the literature of the main key authors. The Analytical
Systemic Framework called “The Future of the City-Regions” (FCR) consists of 5-Systems:
URBS (Urban System), CYBER (Relational System), CIVITAS (Socio-Cultural System),
POLIS (Socio-Political System) and DEMOS (Democratic System).
It discusses: What does the term “City-Region” mean? Does it ”capture some of the
most distinctive aspects of contemporary global urbanisation, and certainly some of the
most pressing challenges and contradictions of urban life in the twenty-first century”
(Robinson, 2013)? How can City-Region’s past experiences be evaluated? Is City-Region a
relevant term in order to locate it in the comparative urban political economy’s challenges?
How can urban regional evidence be identified in an Analytical 5-System Framework
(hereinafter FCR is used as an abbreviation of Future of City-Regions)? Can we talk about
just one model of City-Region? How can we develop a robust theoretical diagnosis
Framework (FCR)? And as a consequence, can we look into comparative facts and
evidence about particular territorial development strategies (hereinafter CTB is used as an
abbreviation of Comparative Territorial Benchmarking) within the results of the work-inprogress empirical fieldwork in the chosen case-studies, such as Basque, Dublin, Portland,
Iceland, Oresund and Liverpool/Manchester?
To sum up, among the cases (CTB), the paper will show some empirical evidence for
such diverse territorial development models and strategies that can be analysed through the
lenses of the 5-System Analytical Framework (FCR). This is a methodological attemp to
organize in each case study, issues such as: new forms and expressions of territorial
cooperation and conflict around questions to do with economic restructuring, new economic
developments, infrastructure, the collective provision of services, governmentalised
remapping’s of state space, immigration and social entrepreurship, in a whole territorial,
spatial and regional entity that we can call, “City-Region”.

2.
Keywords:
City-Regions, 5-System, Comparative Research, Analytical Framework, Social Innovation,
Networked-Regions, Fieldwork, Basque, Dublin, Portland, Oresund, Iceland and
Liverpool/Manchester.
Introduction
A recent natural consequence1 of the economic recession and crisis has been a
debate about the meaning, the role, the relevancy and the understanding of the City-Region
concept (Harrison, 2013; Robinson, 2012; Morgan, 2013) that has arisen among scholars
and practitioners in urban and territorial studies. At the same time, as a solution and a way
to overcome this situation, a “hype” has emerged about the "so called” multidisciplinary
approach Social Innovation (Moulaert et al, 2013).
Bearing in mind the complex nature of the City-Region as a whole concept and the
cases that we find in reality, and the fuzzy understanding of Social Innovation as an
approach, the article aims to analyse the relevance of the City-Region concept, proposing
an Analytical Systemic Comparative Framework that consists of 5 Systems (Calzada, 2011)
to be applied in some case-studies2.
City-Region is a geography that arouses confusion (Scott, 2001). Hence, the article
argues that we should encourage the use of open and Analytical Systemic Comparative
Frameworks that can function for us as “lenses” to link, map and tag factors in certain
territorial cases (Innerarity, 2013, 140-200), that follow the completion of the urban-regional
spaces known as City-Region (Harrison, 2013). The key point here is that these territorial
networked spaces (Haesbaert, 2012) should be considered and visualized from a Systemic
(Bateson, 1988) point of view from the comparative urban political economy (Morgan, 2013)
“which can help us to understand the political specificities of city-regionalism because the
local politics of the city-regional process has been curiously neglected in both the urban
planning literature and radical geography literature”.
In order to outline this point, this article will present some evidence-based and
published case studies (Dublin and Portland) (Calzada, 2011a) and some current work-inprogress fieldwork research (Basque3, Oresund4, Iceland5 and Liverpool/Manchester) about
City-Regions.
Part A. Conceptual proposal: The Future of City-Regions.
The term City-region was first coined at the beginning of the last century. In fact we
can trace the City-Region concept all the way back to 1905 and the work of Patrick Geddes
(Welter, 2002), a pioneering Scottish planner and one of the founding fathers of modern city
and regional planning. In the 1950s-60s, City-Regions flourished in Europe (mainly the UK
and the Netherlands) as a paradigm that defines territory as a reticular interconnected
complex territorial system. According to Scott (2001), there were more than 300 CityRegions around the world with populations greater than one million. Surveying the literature
on new city-regionalism reveals a proliferation of new terms and concepts. Included are
various derivatives, extensions, and alternatives to the traditional theorization of CityRegions, with prominent examples being as Harrison has gathered (Harrison, 2013): Global
Catterall,
2013.
Basque,
Dublin,
Portland,
Iceland,
Oresund
(Malmö
&
Copenhagen)
and
Liverpool/Manchester
1
2
3
Work-­‐in-­‐progress
field
work
research
in
the
Basque
City-­‐Region
(2008-­‐2013):
In
2012
Dr.
Calzada
was
the
Scientific
Director
of
the
City-­‐
Region
Congress
in
Spain.
http://www.igorcalzada.com/euskal-­‐hiria-­‐2012-­‐kongresuaren-­‐zuzendari-­‐zientifikoa-­‐bilbo-­‐euskalduna-­‐jauregia-­‐26-­‐
27-­‐azaroak
See
also:
http://www.basquecity.org/2012/11/euskal-­‐hiria-­‐2012-­‐basque-­‐city-­‐region.html
4
Work-­‐in-­‐progress
field
work
research
in
Oresund
City-­‐Region
(2010-­‐2013):
http://www.igorcalzada.com/basque-­‐oresund-­‐connection-­‐
fieldwork-­‐august-­‐2013
5
Work-­‐in-­‐progress
field
work
research
in
Iceland
City-­‐Region
(?)
(2006-­‐2013):
http://www.igorcalzada.com/basque-­‐iceland-­‐connection-­‐
september-­‐september-­‐2013

3.
city-region (Scott 2001a); world city-region (Kunzmann 1998); mega city-region (Xu and Yeh
2010); polycentric mega city-region (Hall and Pain 2006); mega region (Florida 2008); metro
region (OECD 2007); metropolitan region (Brenner 2002); polycentric metropolis (Hall and
Pain 2006); urban region (Meijers 2005); mega urban region (Douglass 2000); polynuclear
urban region (Turok and Bailey 2004); super urban area (Harrison 2013); cross-border
metropolitan region (Harrison and Growe 2012); new megalopolis (Knox and Lang 2008);
and, megapolitan region (Lang and Dhvale 2005).
Nevertheless, the current debate about City-Regions should not forget that what is
demanded are new territorial development strategies capable of arresting economic decline
and providing new measures in support of economic development (not necessarily via
growth), whilst at the same time managing territorial inequality and responding to concerns
over the democratic legitimacy of existing decision-making structures and public policy
interventions.
Therefore, the author argues that there is not a single model and he considers the
FCR as a framework rather than a model or a specific territorial strategy. Hence, what we
can observe is that there are different models of application of City-Region due to their
diverse socio-economic strategy and ideology. To sum up, the central statement of this
paper is supported quoting Morgan’s clear great contribution (2013): “it is an ecological
fallacy to suppose that what is true of some city-regions is true of all city-regions”.
Part B. Methodological proposal: The 5-System Analytical Systemic Framework.
The Framework consists of 5 Systems:
1. URBS: Urban System.
City-Region analysis is always focused on this system, which is the technical and
physical one. It is concerned with the tangible and visible part of the territorial space without
considering the relational aspects of this technical system. It contains three factors for
analysis: Human Geography, Spaces for Social Interaction and Hub & Periphery “RUrban”
configurations. Some of the questions that we will be answering with the case studies are:
What are the human composition critical factors for the socially innovative understanding of
the City-Region? Are the infrastructures well designed for the covered territorial scale and
human needs?
2. CYBER: Relational System.
This system cares about the spaces of flows and spaces of places (Castells, 1996). The
good or bad usage of the URBS will be the Physical CYBER. Three factors are: Physical,
Digital6 and Social Connectivity. Some of the questions: Is the City-Region well designed
from the shared mobility perspective? What is the role of technology in the urban-human
everyday life? And finally, what are the challenges for Social Connectivity in order to
increase the Communitarian Social Capital rate?
3. CIVITAS: Socio-Cultural System.
This system treats the citizenship (Keith, 2005) configuration in the given City-Region.
Once that we have traced and identified the “hard” side of the City-Region and how this is
used dynamically, with the CIVITAS we approach the “soft” part, that has always been
ignored by the classical urbanism. It contains three factors for analysis:
Multiculturalism/Cosmopolitanism,
Social
Entrepreneurship/Economy
and
Local
Communitarian Development. Some of the questions: How is the City-Region considering
immigration and diversity, local communities and grassroots, social entrepreneurship,
education and talent?
4. POLIS: Socio-Political System.
Finally, this system analyses the power relations and dynamics (Innerarity, 2013). It
Hollands,
2008.
6

4.
contains three factors for analysis: Global/Local/Translocality, Participation and Governance.
Some of the questions: How can we represent the City-Region taking into account the
global and local sphere and the translocal migration dynamics? What is the role of the
participation? Finally, what are the constitutive elements of the Governance and the power
relations between stakeholders?
5. DEMOS: Democratic System.
To sum up, we obtain the systemic sum of the previous 4 Systems in an interdependent
and permanent balance/unbalance7.
Dr
Igor
Calzada
7
"Any
order
is
a
balancing
act
of
extreme
precariousness"
(Walter
Benjamin)

5.
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