Any tract of the Earth’s surface with either natural or man-made characteristics which mark it off as being different from the areas around it. ‘The formation of any given regional map is reflective—and indeed constitutive—of an unevenly developing, often overlapping and superimposing mosaic’ (Martin and MacLeod (2004) TIBG 29, 4).

Paasi (2001, Eur. Urb. & Reg. Studs) writes of regions as ‘collective institutional structures…regions are not independent actors; they exist and “become” in social practice and discourse’.

Many geographers have attempted to distinguish regional boundaries; for example, Slaymaker (2007) Sing. J. Trop. Geog. 28, 1 discusses whether or not South-East Asia is a legitimate physical geographical region. However, as Shields (2007, Putting Region in its Place Conf., U. Alberta) points out, ‘topography is only one component of geographical identities…a place might be said to realize or to embody a regional character, but these statements are always made with a view to contrasting some quality of the region with the qualities of other regions.’ Jones (2006) AAAG 96, 2 finds international region building ‘a messy, problematic, and highly contested activity for parcelling, regulating, and representing geopolitical space’.