Competing discourses of territorial development: tensions between cities and regions as a result of the new regionalism

Competition between metropolitan areas and old regions is one of the most visible results of the ‘new regionalism’ policy in the EU. The aim of this paper is to explain the newly emerged tensions between the regions and the cities within the EU in the context of the ‘new regionalism’. The newly introduced ‘Integrated Territorial Investments’ (ITI), a potentially powerful instrument of the cohesion policy of the EU was presented as ‘a flexible mechanism for formulating integrated responses to diverse territorial needs’. However, this flexibility produced a competitive relationship between cities and regions in their chase for money. Based on interviews with sub-state officials, the study focuses on two countries: Czechia and Slovakia. They are both major recipients of EU structural funds and the ITI tool is being implemented in both of them, however with different outcomes. Three variables have been identified as major factors causing the tensions: insufficient administrative capacity, political challenges and lack of shared understanding of priorities of regional development among sub-state actors.