The city region as concept,object, and practice

The article examines the development of city regions with a three-dimensional approach: the city region as concept, object, and practice. The authors base the conceptual, top-down approach on theoretical perspectives from economics, institutionalism, and planning. The understanding of the city region as an object refers both to its territory and its materiality, i.e. population, infrastructure, and landscape. A bottom-up and practice-generated understanding of city-regional development is based on populations’ practising of city regions through everyday mobility, i.e. commuting and shopping, and on the institutional practices related to the spatial organization and responsibility of political bodies, businesses, and civil society organizations. These dimensions and the relations between them are generated and illustrated by an empirical investigation of the emergence of small city regions in Norway. The analysis shows that whereas the economic rationale provides one argument for institutional practices in establishing, naming, and planning city regions in Norway, the common practices of populations do not always coincide.