The Future of City-Regions Comparative Territorial Benchmarking. (Conference Proceedings of the Regional Studies Association RSA Winter Conference November 2013 London - UK).

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-in-progress 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”.

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-in-progress 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 City-Regions 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 City-Regions, with prominent examples being as Harrison has gathered (Harrison, 2013): Global                                                                                                                1  Catterall,  2013.  2  Basque,  Dublin,  Portland,  Iceland,  Oresund  (Malmö  &  Copenhagen)  and  Liverpool/Manchester  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    

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

                                                                                                               6  Hollands,  2008.  

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)  

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