The urban transformation and the increasing inter-urban competition pose new challenges for city-regions. Cities have extended far into their hinterlands and the social and economic relations within city-regions are much less concentrated on the urban core than some decades ago. In fact, most cities have become regional. This poses new coordinating challenges of how to tackle the related planning problems. It is this context in which strategic planning and learning returned in the debate on urban and regional development. Metropolitan governance and the capacity for strategic learning are regarded as essential elements for urban development in city-regions. Many city-regions are in the process of formulating and implementing spatial strategies as response. New political arenas have emerged in the processes. However, the development of such urban strategies takes place in an arena with difficult actor constellations under institutional constraints. The Ruhr in Germany and the Randstad in the Netherlands are two exemplary city-regions searching for new ways to respond to these challenges.