How do you profile a diverse region? Based on what story, and under what name? The Southern Randstad, a conglomeration of large cities, medium-sized cities and villages in the Netherlands, wishes to make a name for itself worldwide as a metropolitan and innovative region. In this article, we will discuss how such a profiling strategy is realized. We will use insights from public administration, geography and those obtained from forty interviews with regional stakeholders. Selecting a new regional profile is a complex matter and sometimes even inappropriate. From the case study, it will be evident that in a pluralistic region collective profiling is only promising if it does not function as a replacement but as an enhancement. Furthermore, it will become clear that an area reference that refers to the two largest cities (Rotterdam and The Hague) in the region name is the most preferable. Finally, municipalities have to ‘play with scales’,i.e. they will have to align their profiling to suit the scale level at which they are presenting themselves.

In the section Review Essay, Gert-Jan Hospers discusses four recent monographies on urban design as a means to achieve political ambitions.