Balıkesir as an example of intermediary city in İstanbul city-region

Intermediary cities, as a new phenomenon in urban studies, demonstrate how urbanization practices and forms change over space and time. Intermediary cities are new urban formations that may be provide more balanced development in regiıns where state spaces develop unevenly and where there is concentration of space explosion. The strengthening of global economies and networks creates global cities, and the expansion of global cities' hinterlands creates creates city-regions. The shift of public investments to competitive city-regions causes rescaling of national spaces and uneven growth as a result of this process. Policies and interventions in city-regions generate a new spatial division of labor and differentiate the functions of cities, while also effecting the social and economic transformation of other cities nearby. The distinction in the city-region brings the intermediary cities to the forefront of the agenda. Intermediary cities are strategic spaces between and within the network of metropolitan cities that can serve as a nexus between the global and the local these cities, which can be an alternative and/or rival to metropolitan cities, represent a new urban life, entrepreneurship, and competition; they present a new economic, social, demographic, and spatial structure. This study aims to analyze the intermediary cities within the city-region effect, which symbolizes the rescaling of the state space. In this way, the study intends to explain how cities can gain new statuses and scales as a result of the city-region effect in the context of Istanbul city-region and Balıkesir. The study employs a mixed method, so the city-region is examined using both qualitative and quantitative data. The study concluded that the Istanbul city-region, which has expanded its scale, has brought new functions to the cities within its sphere of influence, and the intermediary city, as a new urban formation within the region, is shaped in Balıkesir to reduce the uneven development occurring within the city-region.