ABSTRACT
Given the roots of the first urban renaissance in Western Europe, which subsequently spread through international trade and colonisation, the adoption of its past glories and possibilities by the European nation-state and collectively through geopolitical formations provides a useful basis for an analysis of how far cultural planning, urban regeneration, and the processes of regionalisation and globalisation have manifested themselves. This is not of course restricted to Europe-east or west-but is a universal/ ist phenomenon in part driven by global economic as well as cultural movements (Hobsbawm 2000).
