From competitive regions to competitive city-regions: a new orthodoxy, but some old mistakes

Under the titles of ‘global city-regions’ and the new ‘city regionalism’ there has been a growing support for a resurgence of city-regions within economic geography. While sympathetic to the general tenor of the new city-regionalism, this article argues for a more synthetic approach to understanding the significance of the city-region. It is argued that the same inherent weaknesses that undermined the previous new regionalist orthodoxy within economic geography, have been collapsed into the present focus upon the scale of the city-region. The article concludes by looking at the broader implications of this for the future of economic geography.