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Geographic Scale and Functional Scope in Metropolitan Governance Reform: Theory and Evidence from Germany

ABSTRACT: In the theoretical debate on metropolitan governance, we are witnessing new discourses beyond the traditional dispute between localists and regionalists. New dichotomies emerge, for example, “jumping of scale” versus “relativation of scales”; “deterritorializiaton” versus “reterritorialization”; “spaces of place” versus “space of flows.” These dichotomies can be interpreted as different proposals and/or diagnoses in respect to the geographic scale and functional scope of emerging institutions of metropolitan governance. The paper aims to trace the empirical question of which direction we are heading by analyzing recent metropolitan governance reforms in six West German metropolitan areas. The findings show that there is a general trend to create soft institutions of governance on a larger scale as a reaction to global competition and continental integration. Beyond this commonality, we discover quite different institutional trajectories. The regions which are strongly embedded in the global economy tend toward a “deterritorialized” form of metropolitan governance with rather weak institutions characterized by large geographic scales and functional specialization. In contrast, the regions which are not as much embedded in the global economy have been able to create strong governance institutions on a regional level characterized by a rather small geographic scope and based on a territorial logic of functional integration and geographic congruence.