European Cities in Globalization: A Comparative Analysis Based on the Location Strategies of Advanced Producer Services

Today there is a key question that lurks behind any consideration of Europe and its cities: is this foundation core zone of the modern world-system showing symptoms of dropping out of the contemporary core zone? It certainly appears that in the period of crises since 2008, Europe has been falling behind other major world-regions. Dubbed the “austerity region” of the world, such an interpretation sees Europe as the first part of the world-economy core to be subject to what are effectively structural adjustment programmes, largely self-imposed but still resulting in a process of peripheralization. Although uneven in impact, this is clearly a result of Europe’s states failing to adequately manage and regulate the economic activities within their territories. However it is far too soon to say whether such a monumental global economic shift is happening but we can investigate the current unevenness of economic globalization amongst European states. We compare three of these states that represent different degrees of potential peripheralization: Spain showing the stronger symptoms, Germany with least symptoms, and Britain somewhere in between. Our study is based upon an original analysis of advanced producer services that combines comparisons between countries and relations between cities

Governing the new metropolis

This article was published in the journal, Urban Studies [SAGE © Urban Studies Journal Limited] and the definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042098013500699The expansion of globalising cities into global city-regions poses fundamental questions about how best to govern the new metropolis. Partly because of the relentless pace of change, these newly emerging metropolitan spaces are often reliant on inadequate urban-economic infrastructure and fragmented urban-regional planning and governance arrangements. Moreover, as the demand for more ‘appropriate’, widely understood to mean more flexible, networked and smart, forms of planning and governance increases, new expressions of territorial cooperation and conflict are emerging around issues of increased competitiveness, infrastructure development, the collective provision of services, and further governmentalised remapping(s) of state space. We identify four central tenets of the metropolitan region/governance debate and discuss their relevance for future research on city-regions: (1) periodisation and trajectories, (2) democracy and accountability, (3) form and function, and (4) fragility and mobilisation. These, we argue, pose key challenges for rethinking city-region governance within the emerging new metropolitan paradigm