A battle on two fronts: competitive urges 'inside' Atlanta

This paper argues that intra-regional competition is as important as inter-regional in the shaping of an urban region. Recent concentration on urban promotion within the discipline places an emphasis on competition between cities that should be counterbalanced by stressing the degree of competition between cities and their suburban peripheries. Using the case of Atlanta, Georgia, and in particular its Vision 2020 initiative, the paper explores how regionalist approaches can easily unravel due to continued rivalries from individual constituents. Placing its theoretical grounding within David Harvey's notion of 'structural coherence', the paper argues that regional policies within a capitalist environment of uneven development tend towards only temporary solutions.