City-regional and metropolitan governance

City-regions and their governance are of growing interest to academics, policymakers and governments internationally amidst a distinctly metropolitan turn. In many settings, city-regions are accepted, supported and promoted as the generators of national economic growth but, simultaneously, their rise has widened social and spatial inequalities. This chapter outlines the causes of city-regionalism and the push towards metropolitanization. Drawing upon international examples, the actually existing variegations of city-regionalism are explored. A research agenda is set out based upon examining the relationships between city-regionalism and inequalities, city-regions and their hinterlands, the diversity of governance approaches and institutional arrangements evident across city-regions, and the need to extend understandings of the phenomenon beyond the current narrow framing in the academic literature. The conclusion reflects upon some emergent questions arising from the global pandemic of 2020..