This paper is intended to address a subject of great importance-urban competitiveness：what it is，how it affects individual cities，and how scholars have studied this phenomenon. There are 5 key point today about the economic situation today with which I will assert we are all in agreement and which do not require discussion：

1）Globalization is composed of trade liberalization at the regional and global levels，the opening of financial and other markets，and an extraordinarily rapid pace of technological advance.

2）Globalization is a powerful phenomenon that is forcing us all to re-conceptualize the processes and relationships of the global economy.

3）Nation states have taken actions collectively which have curtailed their capacity to intervene in their own economies to protect or promote domestic economic agents.

4）National economies are dependant upon the performance or competitiveness of their urban economies for if there is such a thing as national competitiveness，it is essentially the compilation of the competitiveness of that nation’s urban economies.

5）The responsibility for policy that can enhance urban competitiveness has devolved to the cities or urban regions.

From this，it follows that in the contemporary context，for both national and urban economies，the two primary policy issues are：

1）Policies that enhance the competitiveness of the individual urban region.

2）The process of strategic-economic planning through which an urban region can realize its economic potential.

Before beginning a discussion of these two issues，we must first examine the concept of urban competitiveness itself.