The concept of "the city" --as well as "the state" and "the nation state" --is passe, agree contributors to this insightful book. The new scale for considering economic strength and growth opportunities is "the megaregion," a network of metropolitan centers and their surrounding areas that are spatially and functionally linked through environmental, economic, and infrastructure interactions.

Recently a great deal of attention has been focused on the emergence of the European Union and on European spatial planning, which has boosted the region's competitiveness. Megaregions...