Regulation Theory,Global Competition Among Cities And Capital Embeddedness

This paper reviews the contribution of regulation theory to our understanding of urban development and its regulation by the state. The theory provides a useful instrument for convergence of politics, economics and geography in which the crucial questions of territoriality of local states and the embeddedness of capital can be considered. But there remains much to be explored both in the mode of development of the global economy over time, and in the relationship between global economic structures and local political institutions. The further development of regulation theory demands a reconceptualisation of power and the absorption of ecological/environmental and feminist discourses into the debates.