ABSTRACT
Allen J. Scott is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Geography at UCLA. Scott is one of the most prominent figures in the “LA School” of urban studies and has written a number of seminal books on industrialization, cultural industries, and regional development (Scott 1988; 1993; 2005; 2008). His work has explored the interplay between technology, inter-firm organization, labor markets, and agglomeration economies. More recently, Scott has examined the shift toward a cognitive and cultural economy and the consequences on world cities in his book, A World in Emergence: Cities and Regions in the 21st Century (Edward Elgar, 2012). Building upon his earlier studies of urban agglomeration, in this chapter Scott joins other global cities researchers in arguing for the enhanced significance of geographical proximity, and therefore of large-scale urban regions, under conditions of intensifying economic globalization. On this basis, Scott explores some of the new political spaces that have emerged in conjunction with the consolidation of globalizing city-regions. According to Scott, national state sovereignty has been partially undermined due to the accelerated “debordering” of national space-economies; meanwhile, new forms of political organization and regulatory experimentation have emerged on the subnational scale of urban regions. This chapter deciphers some of the emergent contours of this “new regionalism,” at once with reference to local economic development initiatives, new forms of inter-firm coordination, land-use planning strategies, new forms of labor market regulation, and, more generally, intensifying struggles over the meaning of urban citizenship. Scott suggests that new forms of collective order and institutional organization have emerged in city-regions throughout the world economy, and that the latter serve increasingly important regulatory functions within the global political system. Due to the ongoing clash of neoliberal and social democratic models of capitalism, Scott argues, the institutional shape and political form of regional governance remain intensely contested. While some scholars have questioned certain aspects of Scott’s analysis—for instance, his apparent contention that national state power is declining—his analysis represents a provocative, lucid, and empirically rich account of how global city-regions have become sites for the construction of new regulatory strategies and new models of political life.
