The European Dimension of French and German Metropolitan Policies

Abstract

The conceptual and theoretical chapters have proposed a perspective on the Europeanisation of metropolitan policies as a process cutting across and linking multiple policy scales. In this multiscalar process, national metropolitan policies often play an important role by influencing intergovernmental or supranational policy development in the European context, and by building the political environment for metropolitan policies at subnational scales. Metropolitan policies are often shaped by national institutions, and accordingly, metropolitan regions are an object of national laws, programmes or policy instruments. In Europe, such national metropolitan policies differ importantly between member states not only concerning main themes, underlying concepts, and scope, but also regarding central actors and implementation. In Germany, for instance, the recent debate evolved around the spatial planning concept of Europäische Metropolregionen, while in France national reforms recently introduced regions métropolitaines as new administrative authorities. This chapter takes into account these particularities, analysing French and German metropolitan policies and thereby exploring complementary or contrasting understandings of metropolitan regions in national contexts. The two following chapters question how national metropolitan policies in Germany and France have evolved in the past decades, focusing on the change of metropolitan concepts and the development of underlying understandings of the metropolitan. Thereby, this chapter intends to describe metropolitan policies in their institutional context and their national specificities, laying the ground for a contrasting comparison. Methodologically, the analysis of French and German metropolitan policies builds on vivid and extensive debates on metropolitan regions in the national urban system and in spatial planning policies, which were led by scholars and practitioners in the respective national spheres. Each chapter summarises the main points of the debate based on the review of secondary literature as well as on empirical investigations. The analysis and interpretation of key documents for metropolitan policies build the empirical basis for the following account, complemented by interviews with representatives from national institutions involved in metropolitan policies.