Provides an up-to-date assessment of the main processes and dilemmas of regional development and regional policy in the new European Union member states in Central and Eastern Europe, highlighting the difficulties of balancing the demands for rapid growth and development with the need for restructuring and development to conform to EU common policies.

Grzegorz Gorzelak is Professor of Economics, and Director of the Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG) at Warsaw University, Poland. He is president of the Polish Section of the Regional Studies Association. He is co-editor of Integration and Transition in Europe: the economic geography of integration (also published by Routledge), and (with John Bachtler) Transition, Cohesion and Regional Policy in Central and Eastern Europe. John Bachtler is Professor of European Policy Studies and a Director of the European Policies Research Centre, University of Strathclyde, UK. His many publications include The Coherence of EU Regional Policy: Contrasting Perspectives on the Structural Funds. Maciej Smętkowski is a geographer at EUROREG, University of Warsaw, Poland. He is co-editor of Cross-border Co-Operation of Poland after EU Enlargement: Focus on Eastern Border.

Part 1: Central and Eastern Europe: The Dynamics of Development and Policy Responses 1. The Puzzles of Convergence: Europe's Economic History in the 20th Century 2. The Competitiveness of Central and Eastern European Countries: An Analysis of the Legal Environment 3. Regional Development Dynamics in Central and Eastern European Countries 4. Challenges for National Regional Policies in the New Member States 5. Policy Lessons from the Reconstruction of East Germany - The Former German Democratic Republic Part 2: Metropolises of Central and Eastern Europe: New Competitors or Secondary Nodes of Global Networks 6. The State of European Cities and the Positions of New Member States 7. Central and Eastern European Urban Regions and the Knowledge Economy 8. Metropolitan Functions of Warsaw, Prague and Budapest 9. Spatial Planning and City Networks in Economic Development: A Critique of the Polish National Development Strategy Part 3: Border Location: An Impediment or Opportunity for Regional Development 10. Economic Geography and European Integration: The Effects on he EU External Border Regions 11. The European Union and Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion 12. The Former Iron Curtain and the New Eastern External Border: The Impact on Spatial Development 13. International Communications and Borders Regions: Transcending the Problem of Scale on the Boundary between Russia and the EU Part 4: Central and Eastern Europe and the Eu Cohesion Policy Reforms: A Source of Change or a Defender of the Status Quo? 14. Renewing EU Cohesion Policy 15. EU Cohesion Policy: A Decline behind the Horizon? 16. Eu Cohesion Policy and the Peripheries of the New Member States. Conclusions