ABSTRACT
European cities have encountered diverse transformations within the past quarter century.
First, the internationalization of trade, attended by huge economic restructurings, reshaped
the economic functioning and organization of urban agglomerations across Europe. New
patterns of intense migration, mobility of capital, goods and people, and ongoing techno-
logical innovation constitute a decisive development condition, namely that of globaliza-
tion (Dicken, 1998; Held et al., 1999). Second, the permeability of borders is being
enhanced by the not yet finished process of European integration, leading to new patterns
of urban and regional development in socio-demographic and economic terms (Kra¨tke,
2007; European Commission, 2010a). And third, recurrent economic crises confront Euro-
pean cities and regions with new policy challenges and a break with approved methods of
multi-level governance and strategic planning (Herrschel, 2009; Camagni & Capello,
European urban agglomerations are also increasingly confronted with inter-place com-
petition for metropolitan functions that shape their urban-regional development (Kunz-
mann, 1996; Friedmann, 2002). Competition under conditions of supranational
economic policies and regardless of the physical geographies of distance and national
urban hierarchies opened up the once stable European urban system for re-positioning.
Thus, European cities actively engage in capitalizing their potentials into assets and pro-
viding area-based advantages for the attraction of human and investment capital
(Camagni, 2009). Depending on their competitiveness, these cities are hence on their
way to becoming metropolizes. Such efforts reach far beyond administrative city bound-
aries, demanding new modes of metropolitan multi-level governance (Healey, 1997; Par-
kinson, 1997; Salet et al., 2003). In this regard, the issue of polycentricity is increasingly
emphasized for its contribution to integrated metropolitan development (ESPON, 2005).
Consequently, European city-regions are assessed on the micro level concerning their
integrated inner development, and on a macro level as concerns their embedding in trans-
national and global networks (ESPON, 2005).
