Evolving structures and challenges of metropolitan regions (original) (raw)
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Alternative Models for managing metropolitan regions: The challenge for North American cities
1999
Regional governments in general, and metropolitan governments in particular, are under threat almost everywhere. Despite an apparent increase in the level of awareness of-and the need for-region-wide cooperation , revenue sharing and direct political accountability within metropolitan regions, the few formal metropolitan governments that do exist to meet these needs are in retreat. This paper reviews the theories and arguments for and against different forms of metropolitan governance-with respect to systems of government, service delivery and development regulation-and outlines the factors that are adding to the need to rethink the organization of metropolitan areas. It then describes a range of alternative models of metropolitan government organization, with examples drawn from urban areas in the U.S. and Canada, and proposes a set of criteria for evaluating those alternatives. As a case study the paper then focuses on recent events in Toronto and the factors which led to the demise of the original metropolitan government. The analysis assesses the consequences of this political reorganization and then speculates on whether this is the end of metropolitan government in Toronto or simply a transition stage to a new form of regional governance at an even larger spatial scale. In concluding the paper identifies some of the lessons learned from the North American urban situation in general and from the Toronto experience in particular.
Governance and Metropolitan Areas
International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) 7(12):806-810, 2018
Cities around the globe always play vital roles in both local and global levels. Starting at the local level, cities provide their residents with a set of services and products that they need while maintaining an acceptable quality of life and developing local economies. While on the global scale, cities are considered sources of economic growth and the nations' driving forces towards development in cultural, social, political and economic life. These roles face restrains as cities expand neglecting their administrative boundaries while experiencing a shortage in either financial or jurisdictional capacity to fulfill their responsibilities. Such expansion and shortage need coordination among local governments through introducing different models of governance targeting successful coordination among local governments. These models of coordination range from voluntary actions among local governments, to the establishment of larger entities at Metropolitan scale. Thus, this paper firstly identifies the evolution of the term Metropolitan and its relation to the City. Besides, the relations between city, metropolitan areas, governance, and performance are described. Thirdly, different models of metropolitan governance will be explored. This paper presents a comparison between different models of metropolitan governance showing that there nothing as best model. It is concluded that enhancement of metropolitan areas governance is directly linked to five main pillars. These main pillars of governance depend more on providing appropriate fiscal powers to achieve effectiveness rather than the selection of the right model of governance (model of coordination).
Exploring the Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions of the Governing of Metropolitan Regions
Urban Affairs Review, 2004
A metropolitan region does not have formal institutional structures such as nations, states, and cities, but it is a system that can be conceptualized and studied as a whole. The study of metropolitan areas too often ignores the dynamic relationship sat the intersection of state and local governments. This study suggests a two-dimensional typology of governance in metropolitan regions. The authors found that governance affects the long-term competitiveness of the metropolitan economy. Governance does not determine economic outcomes but reduces the ability to adapt. The worst combination for metropolitan competitiveness is decentralization within regions where there is a centralized state government.
2002
This review focuses on metropolitan issues, not urban issues in general; but rather those problems that can best be tackled at a metropolitan scale to overcome the problems ascribed to jurisdictional fragmentation. Most metropolitan areas consist of a densely developed core city surrounded by suburbs that are engulfing smaller urban centers and villages, sprawling out into the rural areas along transportation routes, and sprouting industries, commercial activities and housing in a seemingly random fashion. They are usually made up of many local governments, often of wildly differing size, population and organizing capacity. A second focus of this paper is metropolitan decision-making for collective goods. Area wide decisions involve complex systems of actors, and a huge variety of actions. Collective goods and services are those enjoyed or used by the population at large: infrastructure, economic, social and cultural development facilities, and environmental protection. Also known a...
This article provides a critical overview of contemporary debates on metropolitan govern-ance and region-wide cooperation in US city-regions. Many commentators have interpreted the recent proliferation of metropolitan reform experiments in US city-regions as evidence that a new " regional coalition " is being consolidated or as the expression of a singular, unified and internally coherent political agenda. In contrast to such assumptions, it is argued that contemporary metropolitan regionalist projects in the USA are extremely heterogeneous , both institutionally and politically, and are permeated by significant internal conflicts and contradictions. Contemporary metropolitan regionalist projects are interpreted here as place-specific political responses to the new forms of sociospatial polarization and uneven geographical development that have been crystallizing in US city-regions under conditions of postfordist urban restructuring and neoliberal (national and local) state retrench-ment. From this perspective, the current explosion of debates on metropolitan cooperation represents not a movement towards a putative " new regionalism " but rather a " new politics of scale " in which local, state-level and federal institutions and actors, as well as local social movements, are struggling to adjust to diverse restructuring processes that are unsettling inherited patterns of territorial and scalar organization within major US city-regions. A concluding section suggests that such metropolitan rescaling projects are redefining the geo-graphies of urban governance throughout the advanced capitalist world.