how regional institutions can foment economic development and attract international capital. Fourth, we will take a look at some examples of global city regions from different economic strata around the world, focusing on their strengths and weaknesses. Lastly, we will draw some conclusions and make recommendations for developing countries that seek to create global city regions within their boundaries.
The concept of a global city region arose from the idea of a world or global city advanced by scholars in the 1960s through 1980s. In today's reality, however, the concept of an insular city is no longer as tenable. A more revealing concept is that of the city region, defined as the "spatial extent of closely linked economic activity, rather than the 'city,' or jurisdictional definition of the settlement" (Simmonds, 3). While city regions typically encompass a number of political subdivisions, they are becoming a new political force out of necessity as community leaders adapt to the reality that many of the problems facing their jurisdictions require region-wide policies and coordinated actions (Simmonds, 3).
This movement towards regional city amalgamations has taken place during the explosion of the global economy, however. Globalization has transformed the post-war world of insular nation-states characterized by strong central governments and national economies with clearly delineated borders. The new world can be seen as "a hierarchy of interpenetrating territorial scales of economic activity and governance relations, ranging from the global to the local, and in which the emerging system of global city-regions figures prominently" (Scott, 12-13). This hierarchy explains the backdrop against which global city regions are developing, and has four main components:
Economic activity is constantly increasing, and, including input output flows, trade, labor migration, foreign direct investment, and monetary flows, b...