This book makes a new contributution to the current lively debate on city regional governance, offering a genuinely comparative approach, covering Europe (east and west) and North America, and thus different 'cultures' of city regionalism. Drawing on a series of case studies conducted by the author the main focus of this book is on the interface between state structure power and the established way of 'doing urban policy' on the one hand, and the pressures and challenges of globalisation, on the other. Hershel argues that the spatiality of cities has become less clear cut, as has the notion of 'region', adding to the challenges of defining and understanding city regions. Whether 'real' or 'imagined', they are, however, becoming the main arena of these various interacting, competing and interdependent processes and structures. This timely contribution to the existing literature examines the intricacies of these processes and issues.