This book highlights the discontinuities and the ongoing development of the urban question in policy-making in the context of the controversial current issues of global reversal and regional revival. It critically examines contemporary public policies and practices at the urban, regional and national scales in order to offer a timely contribution to the debate on the significance of the urban dimension and interpretation in terms of the theory, policy and practice of social-spatial research in the twenty-first century.

Focusing on Europe, it explores the current urban policy agendas at different scales - and the mobility of those agendas -, their implications, contradictions and controversies. It brings together original contributions from multiple disciplines but with an urban perspective, including empirical case studies and critical discussions of the following topics:

• the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the global"New Urban Agenda" as part of the Habitat III process;
• the Urban Agenda for the European Union;
• national spatial policies related to urban agendas;
• urban agendas at regional/urban levels;
• city regionalism discourse and state rescaling;
• new formal regional and metropolitan governments as a solution (or problem);
• the role of new actors in regional urbanization dynamics;
• multi-level governance processes in developing an urban agenda;
• informal assemblages at the metropolitan scale aiming at constructing the urban concept and dimension.

Given its scope, the book is of interest to urban, regional and EU policy-makers, scholars and students working in the fields of urban geography, urban studies, EU urban and regional policies, and planning.

Autorentext
Simonetta Armondi Arch., PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Economic and Political Geography at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, where she teaches Urban Planning and Urban Political Geography. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Urban Technology and EyesReg (Journal of Regional Science) and together with S. Di Vita, she coedited Milan. Spatial Pattern and Urban Change (Routledge, 2018), and The New Urban Geographies of Creative and Knowledge Economy. Foregrounding Innovative Productions, Workplaces and Public Policies in Contemporary Cities (Routledge, 2018). Her most recent published article is State rescaling and new metropolitan space in the age of austerity. Evidence from Italy, Geoforum, 81 (2017). Her research interests focus on urban and regional change and economic restructuring related to contemporary spatial rescaling, as well as public policies in which old and new spatial narratives are mobilized.

Sonia De Gregorio Hurtado Arch., PhD with European mention, is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Urban and Spatial Planning at the School of Architecture of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid UPM.  She has experience as a practitioner in architecture and urban planning, developing projects in Europe, North Africa, Asia and Central America, and served as a research fellow at CEDEX (Ministry of Public Works). She has also been a visiting researcher at the European Institute for Urban Affairs (Liverpool), the Boku University (Vienna), and the University IUAV of Venice (Italy). She has participated as an expert in the framework of the Urban Agenda for the European Union (Urban Poverty and Urban Research Partnership). Her research work focuses on analyzing the urban dimension of EU policies and national urban policies, with a focus on integrated urban regeneration, local climate change, mobility and gender.

Inhalt
(Introduction) Making Sense of the Urban Agendas: Studies in the Production and Use of the Urban in Agenda Discourses.- Part I: The Urban Agenda for the European Union: Spatiality, Knowledge, Powers.- Understanding the Emergence of the Spanish Urban Agenda: Towards a New Multi-level Policy Scenario?.- Urban Policies in Portugal.- Gender Impact in the Agenda 2030.- Part II: Scottish City Regional Deals: A New Type of Multi-level Partnership?.- The Politics of Making Regions - Competitiveness and the Re-presentation of Territoriality in Europe. The Case of the International Øresund Region.- Metropolitan Areas in Italy, Between National Agenda and Local Agendas.- Part III: The Urban Question in German Policy Making.- Metropolitan Development and Governance: the Cases of England and France.- Metropolitanizing a Nordic state? City-regionalist Imaginary and State Territorial Restructuring in Finland.- Part IV: Urban Agenda at the Regional Scale: the Case of Andalusia.- The Implementation of Madrid 2030 Agenda.- Urban Agenda and Metropolitan Governance: the Case of Milan.- Conclusion. Advancing Urban Agenda Research.