Whereas many West European conurbations are already efficient promoters of regional economic development for their surroundings, such "lighthouse functions" of city regions still have to be established in the CADSES area. CITYREGIO II bundles six second-order cities and their respective regional partners or national regional development authorities - depending on the national distribution of competencies. The cities involved in the project are surrounded by peripheral regions which largely depend on the economic success of the urban centre. Coherent spatial development following the Lisbon and Gothenburg targets as well as the recent Beaupuy Report drafted by the European Parliament or the draft strategic guidelines for European Cohesion Policy depends on the capacities of city regions in their role as centres of growth and regional leadership. However, second-order cities in the CADSES region rely on co-operation with their surroundings to bundle their diverse approaches of economic development. CITYREGIO II increases the capacities of selected city-regions and spurs their economic development building on a profound knowledge base elaborated through the previous CITYREGIO project (e.g. regional location information system, feasibility studies for strategic investments, clustering of SMEs) that allows the involved city-regions to quickly move towards the realisation of concerted economic (cluster) promotion activities, human resource management and location development initiatives. Expected Results: CITYREGION II aims at strengthening the capacities of the urban centre and its surroundings for efficient collaboration through an exploitation of CITYREGIO results by practical implementation in the partner city-regions. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen the economic capacity and competitiveness as regional drivers of growth for the entire region through effective city-region co-operation.