The Ambiguity of New Regionalism

The notion of 'new regionalism' is used widely in the discussion of metropolitan economic and spatial development in North America, Western Europe and Australia today. However, the term is an ambiguous and controversial one as it is used in different contexts and for several strands of analysis (Gleeson 2003; MacLeod 2001). This paper suggests to distinguish more clearly between the different 'new regionalisms', not only to avoid confusion within the planning literature, but also to distinguish the discussion from other 'new regionalisms', such as for example new regionalism in an international political economy context where regions are understood as supra-national regions (MacLeod 2001; Allison 2004, Kelly 2007). For this clearer distinction categories and new terms are developed in order to clarify the differences and context of each 'regionalism'. This has been done through investigating journal articles on new regionalism and exploring the different uses of the term.