Metropolitan Planning and Governance in the New Urban Agenda: A Post-socialist Perspective in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The New Urban Agenda (NUA) explicitly refers to metropolitan planning and governance as a necessary means of effective implementation of sustainable urban development. Although metropolitan planning and governance is increasingly becoming a global topic, for many years theoretical and practical discussion on this issue has been dominated by the Western perspective that usually does not take into account specific historical and political background of other regions of the world. The objective of this chapter is to explore the abilities to implement NUA guidelines in the field of metropolitan planning and governance in post-socialist countries of Central Eastern Europe (CEE) with their legacy of the socialist past and experience of the democratic transformation after 1989. The identification of processes and challenges responsible for the specific nature of metropolitan areas in post-socialist CEE is followed by in-depth case study of the Poznań metropolitan area, which is the most advanced example of bottom-up planning and governance in Poland – the largest CEE country. The empirical evidence from face-to-face interviews with local political leaders has revealed a complex nature and difficult creation process of metropolitan governance arrangements indicating as the main challenge the need to overcome city-suburbs conflicts that arose in the transformation period.