Cities in Old Industrial Regions Between Local Innovative Milieu and Urban Governance—Reflections on City Region Governance

Over the past few years, city regions have received a great deal of attention as important policy objects. Documents like Europe 2000 + and the German European Metropolitan Regions are cases in point. Academic debate has provided a number of paradigms which understand city regions as complex structures. The local innovative milieu and urban governance represent two of the more interesting examples of such paradigms. When applied to a region, evidence substantiating both paradigms can be found despite reality not simply following model assumptions. However, both help to get to grips with another layer of interpretation; that of the role of structure and agency in city regions.