Fraud seems to be on the rise. That feeds a demand for controls. This paper sketches the diversity of supply in reaction to this demand: public regulators of course, but also commercial information providers and benchmarkers, self-regulating associations, hallmark producers, certification and accreditation bodies, and internal business management control systems, whereby ever more levels of control are piled on top of each other. More than a million Dutchmen earn a living in this booming control-industry, or 14% of the working population. In addition to fraud, other causes of this trend are being discussed, among them, paradoxically, neo-liberalist deregulation policies. All these causes contribute to a sense of risk and uncertainty. Although this trend has a number of negative consequences, it has a major benefit: jobs! Economists may have long thought that transaction costs are there for the transactions. But it looks as if transactions exist to produce transaction costs.

Cities are in stage of transformation under the combined effect of enlargement of scale and the enlargement of scope of urban activities. The enlargement of scale is visible in the regionalization of urban development. Housing markets, labor markets and mobility patterns crystallize at regional level. However, the scaling up of urban life is not just an extension of the city as is experienced over more than a century. The simultaneous enlargement of scope makes the transformation more complex and dependant on external connections, both in the private and the public sector. The essay explores concepts that try to explain the nature of this new complexity. What is the meaning of 'urban space' and 'urban place' under the conditions of globalization? And what are the consequences for the guidance of collective action in the context of multi actor and multi level governance? The nature of urban change is illustrated in the case of the Randstad Holland, in particular the region of Amsterdam.