The lack of metropolitan cooperation is one of the big challenges of European urban development. Well organized metropolitan cooperation is important to better approach the economy of scale for urban production and services. Moreover, it also allows to better handle the externalities of economic, environmental and social interventions, as the conditions of integrated and balanced urban development can best be effectuated over the territory of the functional urban area. Finally, good metropolitan cooperation might significantly strengthen the resilience of urban areas in crisis situations - such as COVID has shown.
To explore the situation of metropolitan cooperation in different European urban areas a survey of 40 cities has been conducted by the Eurocities Metropolitan Areas Working Group in the early 2010s. This was followed by a research of Metropolitan Research Institute (Budapest) on the request of the Area Metropolitana de Barcelona, reagarding the functioning of the metropolitan areas of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Greater Manchester, Stuttgart and Zurich. On the basis of this critical overview two basic approaches of cooperation and organisation of the metropolitan areas have been identified: the institutional and the procedural (planning-based) approach.
The paper aims to summarize the lessons learnt from the European good practices of metropolitan governance and planning. Depending on the given constellation of problems in an urban area, an appropriate combination of institutionalization and planning-based processes might be needed to achieve better metropolitan cooperation. Besides bottom-up efforts of municipalities and adequate enabling EU policies, the national regulatory frameworks constitute the most important condition for the success of such efforts. However, there are big differences in such national frameworks and policies, largely explaining the distinct development models of metropolitan areas in different parts of Europe.
Mots clés : metropolitan governance|institutionalization|strategic planning|integrated development|functional urban areas
A103681IT