Department of Urban Planning
University of California, Los Angeles

This paper about the "real" economy of cities and regions is built around six propositions:

1. A limited number of city-regions are the major nodes and focal points of a globalizing economy;

2. Finding an appropriate form of governance continues to be a critical concern for most of these regions;

3. In today's world, city-regions are made increasingly responsible for managing their own development;

4. The sustainable development of city-regions requires greater attention to the creation of regional wealth in its multiple forms;

5. City-regions have much to gain (and nothing to lose) by associating with other regions in networks especially, if not exclusively, across national borders in the continuing quest for a sustainable development;

6. City-regions situated in geographic proximity to each other, but embedded in national economies of different levels of economic achievement and sharing cultural affinities, can collectively strengthen their competitive position by collaborating with each other in the creation of a sustainable common/wealth.

A number of concrete example help to illustrate these propositions, including intercity networks in Europe and an emerging network of cities in the Yellow Sea Regional Cooperation Zone in Northeast Asia.