Economizing imaginaries of city-regionalism as politics of city-regionalization

In this chapter, we seek to provide some conceptual clarifications regarding the interrelationship between the concepts of ‘city-region’, ‘city-regionalism’ and ‘city-regionalization’. These relations have not been properly addressed in research that has otherwise carefully examined the various city-regional processes that bring together the private and the public, and the urban and the regional. Moreover, we argue that the analysis of city-regionalism warrants attention as regards economizing imaginaries of city-regionalization, that is, to the ways in which imagined territorial structures of the state and governance facilitate the realization of putative economies of scale and scope on the part of their economic and political proponents.