The development of city regions can be regarded as both a driving force behind and a consequence of increased interaction between firms and people in a region. This paper focuses on people's place attachment to different geographic levels – neighbourhood, residential municipality, and city region – and the relationship between place attachment and mobility. In the present paper, the issues of whether attachment differs between residents in small versus large regions, between the centre and hinterlands, and of whether there is a relationship between attachment and mobility (commuting and migrating) are in focus. The analyses are based on a questionnaire distributed in 2009 to 6000 citizens in the city regions Göteborg and Umeå in Sweden. The study shows a relationship between mobility and attachment to the neighbourhood and residential municipality but not with the city region. Satisfaction with the social life in the neighbourhood and public services in the residential municipality were shown to be important for the respondents, place attachment. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.