Overcoming barriers to institutional integration in European second-tier urban regions

ABSTRACT

Within the debates about the socio-economic advantages of cohesive urban regions, several barriers to institutional integration are said to exist, especially when a metropolitan government is absent and integration relies on inter-municipal cooperation. Some barriers are associated with different urban region structures, such as the asymmetric power relations and sociocultural contrasts between municipalities in systems with dominant core cities, or the lack of a leading city to overcome fragmentation and provide a shared identity in polycentric urban regions (PURs). This paper investigates whether urban regions formed around second-tier cities, whose features depart from both dominant core and PUR models, are able to mitigate these barriers when pursuing integration strategies. The analysis relies on interviews with municipal leaders in three representative European case studies, examining how they perceive the barriers to inter-municipal relations in second-tier urban regions. The findings show that perceptions vary not only between regions, with the three cases following different trajectories of integration, but also within regions, according to the geographical and socio-economic context of municipalities and the legacy of past relations. In general, barriers to integration are not minimized without explicit efforts to rebalance power relations, approach political cultures, mobilize core city leadership and develop a metropolitan identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Second-tier cities
• urban regions
• institutional integration
• metropolitan identity
• inter-municipal cooperation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In different countries also known as city-regions, metropolitan regions, etc. The term ‘urban region’ is used here to denote the type of territorial form generally associated with these definitions.

2. Antwerp is an ambiguous case, as different criteria provide different perspectives on the polycentric structure of the Belgian urban system. However, for the issue of political and economic importance considered here, the primacy of Brussels is clearly stated in the ESPON (2012, p. 28) report; see also Hall and Pain (2006).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education) [grant number SFRH/BD/80157/2011].