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| PROSPECTS OF COMPETITIVE REGIONALISM AND REGION-BUILDING |
| LUO Xiao-long1,2 |
1. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China;
2. Research Center of Human Geography, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China |
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Abstract With the deepening process of globalization, competitive regionalism is prevalent in the world, and region-building has been induced in many regions as a tool to enhance city and region's competitiveness. Under this circumstance, many inter-jurisdiction city-regions or cross-border regions are emerging in the world. With the triple process of decentralization, marketization and globalization, transitional China has adopted city-region planning to serve the purpose of competitiveness promotion since 2000, and many local governments also substantiate spatial planning through city reposition, infrastructure improvement, and strategies of spatial and industrial development. This study thoroughly reviews western literature on competitive regionalism and region-building, and proposes a theoretical framework involving region as social construction, the role of spatial planning in region-building, stages of region-building, and stakeholders' conflicts in region- building. In theory, region is conceived as space formed by various social forces, in other words, a result of interaction among various interests, instead of a geographic and fixed unit defined by natural physical barriers. Spatial planning has played an activated role in region-building, by defining the discourse for region- building. For the stages of region-building, there are five levels of regionness, with increasing regionness from regional space to regional complex, regional society, regional community and regional institutionalized polity. Of course, region-building is not a linear process. Instead, there are many conflicts among stakeholders due to heterogenous interests and the lasting territorial logic, even after the formation of new regional space. These four lenses are very important aspects for studies on competitive regionalism, which can be applied to transitional China's study. In addition, this study also examines relevant literature on urban competition and spatial planning in urban China. It is argued that we need to investigate China's city-region competition, spatial planning and region-building from the perspective of institutional economy. Finally, four further directions that deserve more scholarly attention are highlighted.
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Received: 25 June 2011
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2012, Vol. 27 
