ABSTRACT
Even in a globalizing world, geography does not become less important; it becomes more important because globalization enhances the possibilities of heightened geographic differentiation and locational specialization. Large city-regions, with their rising levels of social distress as a result of globalization, are confronted with a series of particularly urgent political challenges, not only because their internal conviviality is in jeopardy, but also because any failure to act is likely, too, to undermine the effectiveness of more purely economic strategies. Insistent globalization under the aegis of a triumphant neo-liberalism would no doubt constitute something close to a worst-case scenario, leading to greatly increased social inequalities and tensions within city-regions and exacerbating the discrepan-cies in growth rates and developmental potentials between them. The prospect of a mosaic of global city-regions, each of them characterized by an activist collectivity resolutely seeking to reinforce local competitive advantages, however, raises a further series of questions and problems.
