“Nations have long been considered the fundamental economic units of the world, but that distinction no longer holds true. Today, the natural units—and engines—of the global economy are megaregions, cities and suburbs in powerful conurbations, at times spanning national borders, forming vast swaths of trade, transport, innovation, and talent.”

- Richard Florida

When emRG started we originally had the massive goal of gathering motivating information for church planting for every province in Europe. Now we are moving more and more toward the urban center. They make up the mega-regions that are driving Europe into the future. Here is a map of the regions published by Richard Florida, Tim Gulden, and Charlotta Mellander in their paper The Rise of the Mega Region

 

As you can see there are 12 mega-regions the largest of which is Am-Brus-Twerp with an out put of about $1.5 trillion and the smallest is Berlin with an output of $100 billion.

How are mega-regions relevant to church planting? Their relevants comes in the way each region is interconnected. As researchers look into the factors that connect cities in these regions they are developing ways of seeing these connections that we did not notice before. For instance, Peter J. Taylor and Kathy Pain reference the work of theGlobalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC ):

Inter-city relations are modelled as an interlocking network; cities are ‘interlocked’ by advanced producer service firms in their everyday tasks of providing financial, professional and creative services to their (often multinational) business clients. These services are provided through office networks and it is the inter-city office networks of service firms that are the focus of all empirical analyses.1

This interlocking of cities based on the service is also one way of looking at the possible avenues where missional communities and churches could be spread throughout the region. There is every reason for this to occur just as the gospel spread during the first century via the network of Roman roads throughout the then Roman empire.

Further the Globalization and World Cities Research Network has analyzed over 530 firms and developed classification of world class cities based on the interlocking of business offices. They list them as alpha, beta and gamma cities. Here is The World According to GaWC 2008 Cartogram of alpha cities 2008:

In addition to the interconnectedness of cities based on the interlocking of firms the mega-region has a high population density and geographic proximity which facilitates the spilling over of knowledge and innovation in industry (Urban Density, Creativity, and Innovation – May 2007). This proximity and density of peoples and networks would most likely enable the spreading of missional communities across a mega-region.

Lastly Taylor and Pain have shown that these regions are “Polycentric Mega-city Regions” meaning that they center of the mega-region is not one large city. There are a number of reasons for this one of which is the way commuters move across a region. Here are the interconnected commuting paths of the British mega-region stretching from London through Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and into Birmingham.  Although it is true that London sits at the center of this region it is also true that the smaller cities are interconnected as well.

 

This great amount of daily travel between cities shows that face to face contact occurs across the region. Missional incarnational ministry requires person to person, face to face contact on a regular basis. The mega-region’s polycentric nature allows for this kind of ministry.

Europe’s mega-regions are thought provoking as we look at them and consider how missional incarnational communities can be built and can spread easily across these increasingly important regions.

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1. Taylor, Peter J., and Kathy Pain. “Polycentric Mega-city Regions: Exploratory Research from Western Europe.” PDF. The Healdsburg Research Seminar on Megaregions, April 4-6, 2007. 28 Jan. 2009 <http://www.america2050.org/Healdsburg_Europe_pp_59-67.pdf>.