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Partnering between municipalities within a city-region is not an easy task. Often there are challenges in the partnering process especially in relation to balancing planning and governance. This research examines how city-region partnerships can move beyond conflict to position themselves to be more successful, both locally and globally. The Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) serves as the main case study. Located in one of Canada’s fastest growing regions, both in terms of population and resource development, the Calgary region is struggling to move forward as a city-region partnership. The struggle appears to be rooted in past regional planning conflicts that have never been adequately resolved. Based on CRP experience, the project examines how city-regions in Canada can move beyond such conflict and associated challenges with particular interest in: the role of planners, the case for collaboration, and the pursuit of a ‘new regionalism’ approach.

Partnering between municipalities within a city-region is not an easy task. Often there are challenges in the partnering process especially in relation to balancing planning and governance. This research examines how city-region partnerships can move beyond conflict to position themselves to be more successful, both locally and globally. The Calgary Regional Partnership (CRP) serves as the main case study. Located in one of Canada’s fastest growing regions, both in terms of population and resource development, the Calgary region is struggling to move forward as a city-region partnership. The struggle appears to be rooted in past regional planning conflicts that have never been adequately resolved. Based on CRP experience, the project examines how city-regions in Canada can move beyond such conflict and associated challenges with particular interest in: the role of planners, the case for collaboration, and the pursuit of a ‘new regionalism’ approach.

Since the 1990s, a regional tier of governance has emerged in England, in a country which historically has not been noted for its regional identities. The vying for European Union (EU) structural funds has been seen as a key factor in the mobilisation of regions across Europe. It is within the context of UK membership of the EU, and the effects of the Europeanisation processes, that some scholars have placed the appearance of English regions. Other scholars have sought to explain the growth of English regional governance principally in terms of a response to globalisation. New Regionalism offers an insight into the renewed interest in regions as the focus for economic governance in an increasingly globalised world. With its emphasis on clusters, skills and innovation as a way to promote a competitive advantage, links have been made with New Labour’s economic agenda. Economic rescaling, on the other hand, has been seen to offer a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the state and the regions. On this view, the state is actively rescaling economic governance in response to the pressures of globalisation, but at the same time still retains its traditional authority. The emergence of governance more generally has also been cited as a factor in English regionalisation. The extent to which the state is being “hollowed out” is a feature of this debate. Again, links have been made specifically to New Labour’s agenda that included plans for devolution for Scotland and Wales and plans for elected regional assemblies in England. This thesis examines the East of England and the South West English regions within the context of these debates. The central argument is that regionalisation in England is a centrally orchestrated process by central government as the nature of governance, but not the state, changes.

Smart growth tools address a diverse range of specific concerns, including historic preservation, farmland protection, habitat conservation, flexible architectural design, and expedited land development. Smart growth unites the traditionally separate and competing growth promotion and growth control measures into a single growth accommodation approach. In addition to these important concepts, Henry R. Richmond posits that smart growth must now be explained within the context of “new urbanism” and “new regionalism.” What smart growth tries to accomplish is thus development with implied improvements in quality of life and environmental protection rather than mere urban growth or economic expansion per se. An important obstacle to smart growth measures is that growth problems rarely respect political boundaries. Scattered development patterns, as well as the traffic congestion, environmental degradation, fiscal stresses, and other problems that often accompany them, tend to be regional in nature, extending beyond the boundaries of any one locality. Accordingly, many growth problems are better addressed through regional solutions that federal, state and local smart growth measures my not provide. The general premise of “new regionalism” is that the economic health of the city and its outlying areas are inseparably intertwined, and that without regional planning and programs, individual jurisdictions in a single region compete with one another for limited resources and economic investment. New regionalists typically advocate from one of these three competing positions: greater economic prosperity, increased environmental protection, or improved social equity. Consequently, many politicians, advocates and activists are calling for the implementation of integrated policies that address the interrelatedness of all regional challenges, including housing, transportation, water, sewage, and other regional physical infrastructure systems. Denver evidences a suite of tensions between the promise and outcomes of planning with a wider, regional applicability. On the one hand, there is a progressiveness that embraces regional governance, growth management, economic vitality and quality infrastructure. But on the other hand, there is the reality of city sprawl, competitive local government relationships, and a convergence of interest between citizen choice and development industry behavior. This report will illustrate three issues regarding effective and efficient regional planning implementation at local, state and federal levels in the context of regional planning efforts in the Denver Metro Area. First, why does infill development and economic revitalization not only benefit the central city but the region as a whole? Secondly, how do land-use assignments and development design, like Smart Growth and New Urbanism, encourage regional planning efforts towards integrated mass transit? Finally, How does government fragmentation and overlap contribute to the lack of regional consensus and efficient planning? / text

The thesis focuses on theoretical and empirical analysis of the New Regionalism trends that are further applied to the case of the European Union. Aim of the thesis is to explain the substance and features of New Regionalism in the world economy and confront them with the current state of integration in the European Union. The matter is whether the European Union, which has belonged to the most successful examples of regional integration, is strong and flexible tool of its member states to cope with changing conditions of the globalized world economy and whether it can aspire for a more substantial role in regional and global governance.

During the last decades a stronger role for the regions has developed in many West European countries. To a significant degree this regionalisation trend has coincided with European integration. The key change in the role of the regional level has been with regard to its status as an agent of regional development. In most West European countries there has been a shift from an approach to regional policy that has focused on redistributive measures from the centre in which the regions play a relatively weak role to a perspective that is sometimes labelled “new regionalism” in which the focus is on the region taking responsibility for its own development. In this new regionalist perspective, which is both descriptive and normative, the region is considered as the appropriate arena for both economic activities and decision-making. In the political systems of the Nordic countries the regional level has traditionally been in a relatively weak position and regional policy has emphasized centralisation and redistributive measures. Not unexpectedly, the pan-European trend toward a stronger role for the region has also found its way to the Nordic countries. The aim of this study is to describe and analyze if and to what extent key actors in three peripheral regions, situated in countries with a strong tradition of redistribution from the centre and a weak role for the regional level, have embraced the new regionalist perspective. The three regions are Troms in Norway, Pohjois-Pohjanmaa in Finland and Västerbotten in Sweden. All are peripherally located with small populations and economies that rely heavily on natural resources. The analysis is based on interviews with regional and local politicians, civil servants, and business representatives. The empirical material is presented in the form of narratives formulated by the regional actors who express their views on regional policy and the role of the region. The results of the study show that regional actors in the three peripheries express similar narratives. To a certain degree actors have embraced the new regionalist perspective in the sense that they see the regional level as an important coordinator for development initiatives and measures. However, the actors’ claims for a stronger regional level must be understood in the context of the unitary state. In this context, the actors’ perspective combines the new regionalist and the centralist redistributive approach, one that can be labelled ‘redistributive regionalism’. The state remains the key actor and is expected to guarantee equal conditions in all parts of the country. The emphasis on strengthening the administrative region is more pronounced in Troms and Västerbotten than in Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, where instead there is a stronger focus on the functional region. Actors in the three regions do not see any contradiction between a strong state and increased regional influence on development issues. In sum, the study finds that the new regionalist perspective has been embraced to a certain extent but that it has been adapted to national characteristics, as well as to the specific conditions in the three regions.

This thesis attempts to present a critical survey on studies on Anatolian capital focusing on their state and market conceptualizations. The studies have been grouped into three due to their theoretical frameworks as the studies employing New Regionalist, state tradition and state rescaling approaches. The thesis proposes New Regionalist and state tradition approaches to Anatolian capital are both ahistorical and aspatial approaches / these approaches develop in parallel with political developments and propose a glossed over portrait of Anatolian Tigers. Anatolian Tigers are generally presented as representatives of free market as they develop with little or no support of the state unlike the former generation of businessmen. Hence they stand for the legitimization of neo-liberal policies. The concepts of entrepreneurship, cooperation and competition are described as the nature and the merits of Anatolian small and medium scaled enterprises which make them compatible with the free market conditions. The last group of literature, state rescaling, is presented as the alternative to the first two with its historical and spatial analysis. The thesis will propose the relational analyses within the state rescaling framework is helpful to reveal uneven development which is veiled by ahistorical and aspatial approaches by including relations of state, capital and labour instead of defining the experience of Anatolian capital as a challenge to the state.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera fyra statliga offentliga dokument för att se vad problemen är representerade att vara som leder politiken mot en riktning där den kommunala planeringen, i form av den fysiska planeringen och bostadsförsörjningsplaneringen, i större utsträckning ska ordnas i- och ta hänsyn till ett regionalt perspektiv. Syftet med denna uppsats blir således också att analysera villkoren för det kommunala självstyret när en av dess grundbultar, den kommunala planeringen, i ökad utsträckning ska ordnas i- och ta hänsyn till den regionala nivån. Den här uppsatsen teoretiska- och metodologiska ansats bygger på ett vetenskaplig paket av Carol Bacchi. Hennes ansats studerar problemrepresentationer och för att besvara den här uppsatsen övergripande frågeställningar använder jag mig av ett diskursanalysverktyg som är inspirerad utifrån hennes ansats. Den empiriska analysen visar att en av problemrepresentationerna är att det pågår en regionförstoring med växande funktionella regioner. En annan problemrepresenation som framträder i de undersökta dokumenten är att det anses vara betydande av en ökad samordning av den kommunala planeringen. Det kommunala planmonopolet, som är en del av det kommunala självstyret, problematiseras att vara av stor vikt i de undersökta dokumenten, men att det finns brister i tillämpningen m.m. Alla dessa problematiseringar ovan som funnits i de undersökta dokumenten kan spåras till en diskurs där hållbar utveckling, konkurrenskraft och tillväxt är det självklara och eftersträvansvärda. Villkoren för kommunalt självstyre kan förstås på det sättet att en av dess grundbultar, den kommunala planeringen, i större utsträckning ska ordnas i- och ta hänsyn till en nyregional logik som bygger på en viss typ av politik med en konsensustradition. / The purpose of this essay is to analyze four public document published by the Swedish state to see what the problems is represented to be, which makes the politics move to a certain direction where municipal planning, more specifically spatial and social planning and housing planning, should take into account regional perspectives. Also, the purpose of this essay is to analyze the terms of the local self-government in a context where the municipal planning is increasingly to be arranged in a regional perspective. This essays theoretical- and methodological approach contains of a scientific package created by Carol Bacchi. Her theoretical- and methodological approach studies problem representations and to answer this essay overall questions I use a discourse analysis tool inspired of Bacchis approach. The empirical analysis shows that there is a problem representation about an ongoing regional expansion, thus expanding functional regions. Another problem representation is that it is considered necessary to have a greater coordination of the municipal planning. The municipal monopoly, which is a part of the local self-government, is problematized in the examined document to be of great importance, but there are some shortcomings in the application. All of these problem representations and problematisations can be traced to a discourse in which sustainable development, competitiveness and growth is desirable. The terms of the local self-government can be understood in the sense that one of its cornerstones, the municipal planning, greater will be arranged in a new regional logic, which builds upon a certain kind of politics with a consensus tradition

In the spring of 2004, a synergistic team of professors, practitioners, and graduate students coalesced in a graduate planning studio at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with the greatest of ambitions: to craft a “Plan for America,” through the year 2050. Their work led to a megaregional revival, weaving the work of Jean Gottman, old regionalists like Benton MacKaye, and New Regionalists like Peter Calthrope into a new perspective on regional planning. In the brief period that followed, a flurry of megaregional research was produced by scholars at Penn, Georgia Tech, the University of Texas at Austin, the Regional Plan Association, and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. But nearly a decade into this megaregional revival, old questions about the concept continue to simmer while many new questions emerge, which begs the question: what exactly has this flurry of megaregional research settled? How exactly are megaregions defined and delineated? Do they even have fixed boundaries? Assuming a consensus emerged on how to define and delineate the space, how could such a large and unwieldy scale be governed? Are megaregions functional economic units or merely a product of poorly regulated sprawl development over vast expanses? If they are indeed functional units, how are they interacting or competing with one another for growth, development, and finite public resources? The answers to these questions have been, well, elusive. This thesis begins to remedy this glaring gap in the literature by conducting semi-structured interviews with the key informants credited with leading the conception and evolution of megaregional thought in the U.S. With their aid, this thesis begins to contextualize the provenance, the evolution, the barriers to progress, and the potential future trajectories of the megaregional construct. One of these potential future trajectories – megaregional economic development – is explored between the nation’s only physically linked pair of megaregions: the Texas Triangle and Gulf Coast. In the final chapter of this thesis, recommendations drawn from these analyses are made for the research, the pedagogy, and the practice of planning for megaregions. Together, this triptych of recommendations outlines a path towards a megaregional future. / text