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Collaborative regional development in northeast Asia: towards a sustainable regional and sub-regional future

This book edited by Kim, Yeung and Choe presents a collection of papers presented at 2010 Presidential Committee on Regional Development Conference (PCRDC) in Jeju. The book has 16 chapters. It begins with an Introduction and is followed by three parts, on “Regional Perspectives” (six chapters), “Sub-regional Perspectives” (six chapters) and “Governance of Cross-border Regions” (three chapters). A multitude of perspectives on collaborative regional development is presented. Authors are from different countries, including Australia, China (including Hong Kong), Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States of America. One of the advantages of this book is its ability to bring together perspectives from scholars of different countries. “What is a region?” This was one of the first questions asked by my undergraduate tutor, the late Dr Stewart Richards. Indeed, the concept of region has continued to fascinate me and many other geographers interested in understanding the world better. Indeed, “region” has become a flexible concept used by scholars to refer to geographical entities of very different sizes. Traditionally, a region refers to a “geographic area of subnational extent” that is “an area that functions as the common spatial framework of daily life for a definite group of people, and that contains a dense mix of socio-economic activities subject to centripetal or polarization forces” (Scott 1998, p. 1). Nowadays, “region” is increasingly used in a much broader sense to encompass much larger geographic area spanning multiple nations, such as the European Union. This book broadly follows the broader regional definitions by treating Northeast Asia (NEA) as a region and describing smaller areas within NEA as “sub-regions”. I can see that not all regional geographers would be ready to embrace this relatively loose definition of a region. Nonetheless, the readers are guided through the thinking of the editors in the Introduction, which clearly situates the discussion of the book against the theoretical strand of globalization and regionalization as parallel processes, and makes clear definitions of territorial boundaries. In particular,