Geographic Scale and Functional Scope in Metropolitan Governance Reform: Theory and Evidence from Germany

ABSTRACT:

In the theoretical debate on metropolitan governance, we are witnessing new discourses beyond the traditional dispute between localists and regionalists. New dichotomies emerge, for example, “jumping of scale” versus “relativation of scales”; “deterritorializiaton” versus “reterritorialization”; “spaces of place” versus “space of flows.” These dichotomies can be interpreted as different proposals and/or diagnoses in respect to the geographic scale and functional scope of emerging institutions of metropolitan governance. The paper aims to trace the empirical question of which direction we are heading by analyzing recent metropolitan governance reforms in six West German metropolitan areas. The findings show that there is a general trend to create soft institutions of governance on a larger scale as a reaction to global competition and continental integration. Beyond this commonality, we discover quite different institutional trajectories. The regions which are strongly embedded in the global economy tend toward a “deterritorialized” form of metropolitan governance with rather weak institutions characterized by large geographic scales and functional specialization. In contrast, the regions which are not as much embedded in the global economy have been able to create strong governance institutions on a regional level characterized by a rather small geographic scope and based on a territorial logic of functional integration and geographic congruence.

Notes

1 This change is much more pronounced in Europe than in the United States, but especially Neil Brenner (1999b, 2002) has been able to inject the concept of “rescaling” into the North American scholarly debate (e.g., Hamilton, Miller, & Paytas, 2004, p. 157; Martin et al., 2003).

2 Neo-Marxist geographers and regional economists who introduced the “scaling” terminology use the term “regulation” because of their affinity with the French Regulation Approach (Macleod, 2001, pp. 820–821; Brenner 2002). I prefer the term “governance” because it not only is more often used in political science and public administration but also implies a more autonomous role of the politico-administrative system, whereas the regulation approach leans toward an economic determinism at least in the sense that the restructuring processes of the economy are the most important factors that influence political and economic modes of regulation.

3 The few attempts at radically dissolving traditional political entities, such as the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, were thoroughly rejected by the populations concerned (Brenner, 1999b, pp. 467–468).

4 The metropolitan regions in Eastern Germany are excluded, because their institutional transformation is being strongly determined by the specifics of the German unification process.

5 The data are compiled by the author from various documents provided by the institutions of metropolitan governance in the six case study regions.

6 The inventory of “world cities” produced by the “Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network” (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc) is also used and presented by the German Federal Office for Housing and Regional Planning (Adam & Göddecke-Stellmann, 2002).

7 Frankfurt is listed among the Alpha World Cities; Munich and Hamburg are categorized as Gamma World Cities; Stuttgart is listed as showing evidence of World City formation; and Bremen and Hanover are not mentioned at all. The argument is partly based on the correlation between the ranking of the city-regions in this list and the characteristics of the city-regions shown in Table 2, but also on a fine-grained comparison of the pairs that have very similar context factors and show fairly but not fully similar features in their metropolitan governance forms: Frankfurt and Munich are the dominant cities within their Länder, both regions show massive socio economic growth—nevertheless, the trend toward “deterritorialized” governance is more pronounced in Frankfurt. Next, the institutional development of metropolitan governance in Hamburg and Bremen is strongly determined by the fact that both cities have the status of Bundesländer—nevertheless, the Metropolregion Hamburg is programmatically and institutionally clearly more oriented toward the global economy. Finally, Stuttgart and Hanover have a similar status within their Bundesländer and a similar economic structure (characterized by clusters of the automobile industry)—nevertheless, programmatically and institutionally Hanover follows more strongly the logic of spaces of place.

8 A similar conclusion can be drawn from the work of Newman and Thornley (2005), who studied the transformation in urban governance and planning in major World Cities around the globe (Blatter, 2005b).