ABSTRACT
Around the world, urban populations are spreading out beyond their old city limits, rendering traditional municipal boundaries, and, by extension, traditional governing structures and institutions, outdated. This global urbanization trend has led to expansion not just in terms of population settlement and spatial sprawl, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in terms of urban residents’ social and economic spheres of influence. As the distinguished urban planner John Friedmann has noted, “we can no longer treat cities apart from the regions surrounding them”. 1
