The Future of the City-Regions

The Doctoral Thesis Investigation carried out over six years by Dr. Igor Calzada PhD (http://www.slideshare.net/icalzada/libro-dr-igor-calzada-phd-hacia-una-ciudad-vasca-aproximacin-desde-la-innovacin-social) favours the opening of diverse fields for future research on matters such as sociological, macro-economic, territorial, institutional, political, environmental, cyber-cultural and town-planning. This research is currently on-going, with the «Benchmarking Future City- Regions» project.

The methodology used by the author is qualitative research, based on field studies via interviews, urban exploration, stays at different European, Asian and American universities, as well as interviews conducted with knowledgeable experts on the present day Basque Country. It includes a detailed overview of the bibliography, the analysis of statistical data, as well as comparison studies.

Likewise, the following concepts addressed have been presented in different social spheres and forums. For example, at «Euskal Hiria 2012 City Region» Congress (http://www.euskalhiria.org and http://www.basquecity.org), in which the public sector (public administration staff, managers and politicians), the private sector (companies, directors and entrepreneurs), the academic world (universities and technology centres), civil society (social movements and ordinary citizens) and individuals (entrepreneurs/ activists) had the time and space to express ideas, listen to one another and bring together their different ways of understanding the present situation.

Since 2012 it has been an extension of qualitative research and cases from Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, which explores and compares different cases of City-Regions and is benchmarked with the Basque City-Region or Euskal Hiria.

This comprises a larger project entitled:

Benchmarking Future City-Regions