Standortpolitik, State Rescaling and the New Metropolitan Governance in Western Europe

Abstract

Throughout Western Europe, metropolitan governance is back on the agenda: since the early 1990s, new forms of citysuburban cooperation, regional coordination, region-wide spatial planning and metropolitan institutional reform have been promoted in major city-regions. In contrast to the forms of metropolitan governance that prevailed during the Fordist- Keynesian period, which emphasized administrative modernization, interterritorial equalization and the efficient delivery of public services, the newest wave of metropolitan governance is focused upon economic priorities such as territorial competitiveness and the imperative to attract external capital investment in the context of geoeconomic and European integration. This article develops an interpretation of the new metropolitan governance in Western Europe in two steps: First, the new metropolitan governance is situated in historical context by underscoring its qualitative differences from earlier waves of metropolitan institutional reform in Western European city-regions. Second, and on this basis, an interpretation of the new metropolitan regionalism in Western Europe is briefly introduced as a new form of locational politics (Standortpolitik) that is emerging in response to some of the failures and contradictions of earlier approaches to local economic development policy. From this perspective, contemporary forms of metropolitan institutional reform are key expressions of ongoing processes of state rescaling through which territorial competitiveness is being promoted at a regional scale, albeit in highly contradictory, often self-undermining ways.