Introduction: The European Metropolis in the Making?

Abstract

This introductory chapter sets out the purpose of the book, which is to decipher the political relationship between the European Union and metropolitan regions. It introduces two interrelated trends that the book intends to address, namely the contemporary emergence of a European dimension in metropolitan policies at various scales and the recent appearance of European metropolitan regions as a new type of political actor in the European multilevel polity. It describes the methodological approach and concrete steps of this investigation.