47(10) 2093–2109, September 2010 0042-0980 Print/1360-063X Online © 2010 Urban Studies Journal Limited DOI: 10.1177/0042098009357960 Anders Lidström is in the Department of Political Science, Umeå University, Social Science Building, Umeå, SE-901 87, Sweden. E-mail: anders.lidstrom@pol.umu.se. Citizens’ Intermunicipal Political Orientations: Evidence from Swedish City-regions Anders Lidström [Paper first received, March 2008; in final form, June 2009] Abstract Theories of public participation, such as the civic voluntarism model, typically assume that local participation takes place in the community where one resides. However, with an increasingly mobile population, this can no longer be taken for granted. Using survey data, this study analyses citizens’ intermunicipal political orientations in urban and suburban municipalities in seven Swedish city-regions. The civic voluntarism model turns out to be only partially applicable. In addition, it appears that having links across the urban–suburb divide—that is, working in a large urban region but dwelling in the suburbs rather than in the city—enhances one’s intermunicipal political orientation. The fndings have practical implications that point to the need to reconsider how urban democracy is organised. Travelling becomes an integrated part of the urban lifestyle and commuting becomes an extension of the working day. Consequently, attachments to the local place may become more tenuous, thereby not only diluting social capital (Putnam, 2000), but also weakening the citizen’s identity and responsibility to the local community (Wellman, 1999). City-regions consist of cities with function- ally interrelated hinterlands (Parr, 2005) and are typically politically fragmented. The com- mon pattern found in much of the Western Introduction In modern societies, increasingly fewer citizens spend their entire day in the munici- pality in which they reside. As urban popula- tions and urban areas grow, more people have to adjust to the specialisation of functions that typify different parts of the city-region. Increasingly, places for living, work, con- sumption and leisure are becoming separated. More people are commuting, shopping in out-of-town shopping centres and spending their leisure time away from home. Clearly, this has profound effects on urban social life.