Challenges of governance in two cross-border city regions: ‘CENTROPE’ and the ‘EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein’

Abstract

Since the 1970s, spatial planning and urban/regional development policies have increasingly paid attention to challenges of city regions. In the Austrian context, two city regions are interesting in this respect: CENTROPE and the EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein. CENTROPE is the largest city region in Austria and is located at the borders to three other European countries. Currently, four European Member States are taking part in this cross-border region (Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Czech Republic; in total eight partner regions and nine partner cities). EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein covers parts of Bavaria (two ‘Landkreise’) and parts of the federal provinces of Salzburg and Upper Austria. These are cross-border city regions, which are mainly constructed politically and have to deal with a range of governance challenges. Both city regions have developed a certain set of measures to establish city regional governance, particularly through fostering thematically oriented cooperation between different city regional actors. In this article, CENTROPE and the EuRegio Salzburg – Berchtesgadener Land – Traunstein will be analysed comparatively with regard to their efforts to establish cross-border city regional governance. The yardstick for depicting developments regarding governance is derived from the literature about governance and city regional governance as well as by a certain theoretical understanding of space. Accordingly, the article argues for defining and analysing city regions more as places of social and political conflict, as sites of actors’ interests’ formation, hence as places, which are socially produced and reproduced. Against that background, the article will mainly address the following: (1) the most evident challenges for further developing cross-border city-regional governance in both regions, (2) the differences between the two regions in terms of governance structures and (3) relation between certain spatial and governance theories to understand the making of city regions.