Urban Political Geography

Running head : GLOBAL CITY-REGIONS

The Emergence of Global City-Regions and the Challenges It Creates

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The Emergence of Global City-Regions and the Challenges It Creates

Regional geography usually concerns the evident similarities and differences of the various regions of the world (Martin and Thompson 2006 . One of the concerns of such field of geography is the ever-changing geographical urbanization throughout the globe Urbanization can come in different forms , thus , in the article by Scott urbanization in the form of expanding

globalization that beset different regions is discussed together with the many effects and challenges that comes with it (2001 . In the article , the author tries to indicate that rather than obliterate the concept of geographical divisions globalization enhances the regional entities currently existing in society to the point that certain global city-regions are created and are faced with the challenges of coping with the mentioned globalization trend (Scott 2001

Article Summary

One of the many fruits of globalization is the creation of wider political-economic regional units called global city-regions (Scott 2001 ,

. 813 . In the so-called city-regions , new political and economic structures arise . Due to the many transformations and modifications that have happened during the centuries , a new system has emerged via globalization . Such condition of society creates four aspects that should be addressed by the new civilization . These four aspects namely are (1 ) the increasing large quantities of economic activity can now occur in the form of long-distance as well as inter-b relationships between regional units (2 ) the number of established multinational organizations is ever-increasing to answer such economic pressures (3 previous regulatory functions of the national administrations are now being performed by regional units , and (4 ) the revival of past economic and political regions have sprouted creating new geographical boundaries (Scott 2001

The fourth aspect discussed by Scott was then further elaborated to give emphasis to its importance and significant consequences . It is in this elaboration of the fourth aspect that the concept of city-regions is introduced . The institution of globalization is therefore the initiator of the necessity of implicitly founding city-regions . Upon verifying the fact that global city-regions exist , the author now tries to analyze the political and economic structures that could possibly be established to answer the needs of the new city-regions . Two budding political principles thus appear the first is a neo-liberal political view . In this view , government interference is at a minimum while economic activity is maximized through market organization (Scott 2001 This view is remarked as a risky one and thus should not be the structure that could be applied to developing city-regions . The second political principle which the author recommends is that of renascent social democracy which is also called the social market approach (Scott 2001 . Such approach is appropriate for economic efficiency and at the same time can selectively commence intervention whenever necessary (Scott 2001 . Furthermore , democracy will be an effective means of addressing the social and political tensions of a diverse population...