City networks for sustainability in Europe: An urban-level analysis

ABSTRACT

Over the last 3 decades, European cities have strengthened their cooperation at the European Union (EU) level to tackle common problems. The joint action of cities has been particularly concerned with the issue of sustainability, signaled by the establishment of specific municipal networks. Socioecological urban networks (SEUNs) have attracted growing academic attention. However, existing research presents two main limitations: firstly, it overlooks the urban context and, secondly, it is mainly qualitative, and the few quantitative studies do not provide an exhaustive account of the urban drivers underpinning SEUN membership. This article adopts an urban approach to isolate the urban-level economic, political, and institutional factors that impact on the involvement of second- and third-tier cities in European SEUNs. For this, logistic and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models are used to identify the urban-level factors affecting SEUN membership. The findings show that interurban networking in Europe is an economic and political strategy adopted mostly by postindustrial cities to strengthen their profile.

Notes

1. More precisely, in this article the terms cities, municipalities, and local authorities indicate city governments (i.e., city councils), and the terms municipal governments and local governments are used as synonyms of city governments.

2. This is the basic tenet of the subsidiarity principle, whereby the central government should intervene when lower administrative levels cannot ensure an effective action.

3. For a discussion on knowledge exchange in TMNs for sustainability, see Andersson (2016); Andonova, Betsill, and Bulkeley (2009); Bulkeley and Betsill (2003); Bulkeley et al. (2003); Bulkeley and Newell (2010); Keiner and Kim (2007); Kern and Bulkeley (2009); and Ward and Williams (1997).

4. The 15th EU member state would be Luxemburg, but only data on the capital city were included in the original data set.

5. Some issues were encountered in the data collection stage. Firstly, there was a problem of data availability, in that a comprehensive and updated database including political, economic, environmental, and social information at the urban level is not yet available. The urban audit data date back to 2004, with updates for 2007 only available for some entries. For some environmental indicators, figures for 2004 were not available for some cities and therefore were replaced by data for 2001. However, for some entries or indicators no figures were available for both years. Data from other sources were excluded due to a problem of comparability. The use of different data sources is particularly difficult when comparing cities from several countries, where information may be classified differently or the indicators may be created using different data sources or processes. Therefore, this may result in a situation where such data cannot be compared.

6. City manager form of government.

7. Existence of a mayor–council form of local government.

8. Mayoral or city manager form of government.

9. The variable financial power includes the following four components used in the Second State of European Cities Report (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung et al., 2010, p. 179, Table X8): (a) “annual expenditure per resident”; (b) “proportion of municipal authority income of local taxation”; (c) “local taxes and contributions in relation to total taxes and contributions”; and (d) “local government expenditure in relation to total government expenditure.”

10. In the State of the European Cities Report (ECOTEC Research and Consulting Ltd et al., 2007) it is specified that data on spending per inhabitants (in absolute terms) and city authority income derived from taxes were taken from the urban audit, whereas harmonized data on the proportion of total public spending spent by local government and the proportion of total tax revenue were received directly by local government from Eurostat.

11. It should be noted that, due to missing data for the modern city variable, the number of cases dropped from 210 to 165. Given the high number of missing cases for the modern city variable, all models were run without this variable. For the OLS regressions, the results showed that without modern city, the significance of the other variables does not change considerably. Conversely, the omission of modern city changed the results of the logistic regressions: in the general model, none of the variables were significant (with progressive city having a significance value of .052), whereas in the sustainable development model the variables strong mayor and cooperative attitude are highly significant.

12. The political leaning variable was created using data from several sources, including websites of national interior ministries; websites of national parliaments; websites of national statistical offices; websites of local governments; websites of local libraries; academic articles; books; newspapers; online databases (collecting data on mayors and local elections); and websites of political parties.

13. The dominant political leaning was computed using the same party/coalition that was in government for 55% or more of the time span or for 45% or more and the difference between the first and second party in terms of years in government was equal to or greater than 14% (i.e., a difference of 4 years). When no party/coalition controlled a given council, it was classified as “alternate.”

14. Mouritzen and Svara (2002) do not cover all of the countries in the EU-15 group. Particularly, drawing on further research on the subject (Ejersbo & Svara, 2012; Kuhlmann & Wollmann, 2014; Magre & Bertrana, 2007), Austria, Germany, and Greece have been included in the strong mayor form. It should be noted that in some countries, such as Austria and Germany, mayoral models differ across local authorities. Although the taxonomy used does not account for such differences, it is a useful tool to shed light on the various administrative arrangements existing in Europe.

15. In those countries where the status regions and provinces do not exist, equivalent territorial authorities were used.

16. When data for 2004 were not available, they were replaced by figures for 2001.

17. The first three indicators represent urban air quality.

18. The multicollinearity diagnostic was performed only for the linear regression.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabetta Mocca

Elisabetta Mocca is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh Business School.