Book chapter in Reanimating Regions, Riding, J. and Jones, M. (eds).
This chapter looks at the ‘new new localism’ and suggests the need to now think about the dawn of a ‘new regional geography’. City-region-based agglomerations are currently riding high on the political and policy agenda across the world. Their emergence is not accidental; they are being built in direct response to the deep ideological and thinking exposed in key documents such as the World Bank’s Word Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography. In most accounts of city-regions, questions pertaining to the social construction of boundaries, territorial shape, and the very becoming of region and their associated institutional fixes remain hidden from view. In contrast, Anssi Paasi’s stress on region building as active and ongoing processes, rich in political strategy and cultural expression, still sanctions useful insights for researchers and regional strategies alike to uncover the very formation of economic and political life.