ABSTRACT
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have a relatively long history of economic cooperation. From 1955 onwards, this cooperation took the form of the supranational union called Benelux, which paved the way for the free movement of workers, capital and services. Thus, Benelux can be regarded as the starting point of more than 50 years of increasing economic and political integration in Europe. Self-evidently, the high levels of economic cooperation among Benelux countries have facilitated the formation of border-crossing linkages between their major urban areas (Dieleman and Faludi, 1998). In Belgium, urbanization and economic activity are concentrated around 18 city-regions (Luyten and Van Hecke, 2007), and especially within the contours of the Flemish Diamond of Antwerp–Brussels–Ghent–Leuven (see Albrechts and Lievois, 2004) and the Walloon cities of Liège and Charleroi. In the Netherlands, the polycentric Randstad region (Amsterdam–Rotterdam–The Hague–Utrecht) forms the economic heartland (Lambregts et al, 2006). The Luxembourg economy is based very much on the strength of its capital city as an international/offshore financial centre (IFC/OFC).
