Territorial, scalar, networked, connected: in what sense a ‘regional world’?

Gordon Macleod, Martin Russell Jones

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

261 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Territorial, scalar, networked, connected: in what sense a ‘regional world’?, Regional Studies 41, 1177–1191. Whilst undoubtedly central to academic and policy-relevant spatial analysis for over a hundred years now, ‘the region’ has continued to be an elusive category: its various meanings and the implications therein frequently being challenged and modified through paradigmatic shifts in such spatial analysis. Today, amid what is undoubtedly a period of dramatic economic transformation, political restructuring and sociocultural change, a range of often multi-disciplinary approaches to the regional concept exist, informing us, variously, how regions can become competitive economic zones within a global economy, strategic political territories in a complex system of multi-level governance, cultural spaces forged through a politics of identity, or – in an approach that departs quite radically from conventional territorially based readings – spaces constituted out of the spatiality of flow and relational networks of connectivity. Drawing on the experience of a post-devolution UK, this paper critically assesses the respective merits of these various conceptualizations of the region, and offers some remarks about the challenges confronting contemporary regional studies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1177-1191
Number of pages15
JournalRegional Studies
Volume41
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2007

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