New regionalism and new urbanism are two mainstream arguments in the recent literatures on the geography of globalization. However, these literatures provide only partial insights into the development of world cities, primarily because for their overemphasis on endogenous growth mechanism, downplaying the role of the state and inter-scalar governance beyond the city. This paper uses Taipei’s recent transformation as a case study to explore this omission, and re-emphasizes the roles of the state and inter-scalar governance politics in city’s spatial and economic restructuring. It suggests that the endogenous and exogenous growth discourse inherent in the world city hypothesis has not provided full policy guidance for Taipei’s restructuring because of its overemphasis on institutional regulations at the city level while downplaying inter-scalar governance. In the Taipei case, development is strongly conditioned by inter-scalar governance that includes complicated national identity issues in cross-strait politics, institutional inertia of restructuring strategies at national level, and inter-scalar governance conflicts at Taiwan’s regional level.

在最近全球化地理研究文獻中的兩個重要主流，就是新區域論以及新都市論。然而，這兩個研究僅提供了世界城市發展的部分觀察，主要是由於他們過度強調內在的成長機制，忽略國家角色以及城市以外之空間層級間的治理。本文以最近台北的變遷發展為例，揭露這個論述的缺漏，重新強調國家角色與空間層級治理政治，在都市空間與經濟再結構的角色。它指出內生成長的論述並不能為台北市的再結構提供充分的政策指導，因為他們過度強調都市層次的制度性調節，而忽略了空間層級間的治理。就台北而言，發展是強烈地受到空間層級治理的影響制約，這包括海峽兩岸間的複雜政治認同，全國層次的再結構策略的制度惰性，以及區域層次的治理衝突等。