Simin Davoudi (p)

Ever since the birds-eye view of Chicago adorned the cover of Burnham’s 1909 Plan for the city, regional space has been subject to multiple and competing imaginaries, each jostling for the position of dominance in politics of scalar fixing. I argue that despite this diversity, the economic imaginary of the region has prevailed in both the EU and nation states, albeit with two distinct rationalities: the cohesion-oriented welfare state rationality, and the competitiveness-oriented neoliberal rationality. I further argue that imagining regions as neoliberal economic spaces has been a key factor in the widening of spatial inequalities within and between European countries, and in the limited success of the ‘Europe of the regions’ project.