Speaker
Description
With enhanced inter-city connectivity and extended urbanization, cities were expanding beyond their traditional city limits to become global city-regions through metropolisation (Scott, 2001). It has led to the bursting open of city-region boundaries, where cities and city-regions in proximity merge into vast, complex, and often cross-border territories (Brenner, 2019). These processes pose challenges for governance and planning across jurisdictions worldwide (Harrison & Gu, 2021; Loh & Goger, 2020; Yan & Growe, 2022). Against this backdrop, critical questions arise: How do supra-regional and intra-regional public actors navigate rescaled territories and engage with relational networks? What dynamics and hidden politics shape the governance of such complex regions during the metropolisation process in different geopolitical contexts?
To address these questions, we employed social network analysis to examine historical state-local political interactions in two cross-jurisdictional metropolitan regions: the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) in China and the Metropolregion Rhein-Neckar (MRN) in Germany. The findings, based on content analysis of regional policies and key-insider interviews, reveal that regional territories have emerged as platforms for accommodating diverse interests, and supra-regional actors (e.g., the State and higher-level governments) act as strong drivers for collective actions in both metropolitan regions. Intra-regional actors (multi-level governments) perform multiple brokerage roles, including liaison, coordinator, gatekeeper, and representative, within regional governance networks.
To further understand the mechanisms behind these dynamics, we compared the continuities, discontinuities, and underlying cartographic representations in three versions of trans-regional plans in YRD, approved by China’s central government, with two versions of trans-regional plan in MRN, supported by the State Treaty co-signed by three German states. The results highlight dynamic institutionalization in both cases, along with state-orchestrated regional cooperation in establishing legally binding plans across jurisdictions. However, a key contrast emerges: while the megaregional practices of the YRD exemplify government entrepreneurship, the MRN case underscores the influential role of global enterprises in shaping regional development.
Our paper contributes to the existing literature on cross-jurisdictional governance and explores the combination of territorial and relational perspectives in analyzing and comparing state-local interactions and governing roles in different cases. Ultimately, these understandings of dynamic geopolitical processes in governing complex regions call for more systematic research and international comparisons across multiple cases.
References
Brenner, N. (2019). New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190627188.001.0001
Harrison, J., & Gu, H. (2021). Planning megaregional futures: Spatial imaginaries and megaregion formation in China. Regional Studies, 55(1), 77–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2019.1679362
Loh, T. H., & Goger, A. (2020). In the age of American megaregions, we must rethink governance across jurisdictions. < bound method Organization. get_name_with_acronym of< Organization …. Retrieved from https://coilink.org/20.500.12592/91t9xr on 05 Sep 2024. COI: 20.500.12592/91t9xr.
Scott, A. J. (Ed.). (2001). Global city-regions: Trends, theory, policy. Oxford University Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=zh-CN&lr=&id=mHE0b45cEEUC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Scott,+Allen+John+(Ed.)+(2004).+Global+city-regions.+Trends,+theory,+policy.+Oxford,+Oxford+University+Press.&ots=MCKyGsWtqX&sig=MoN-hVjHo_z8mCK9nmSqOG0V65k
Yan, S., & Growe, A. (2022). Regional Planning, Land-Use Management, and Governance in German Metropolitan Regions—The Case of Rhine–Neckar Metropolitan Region. Land, 11(11), 2088. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11112088
| Keywords | State-local political interactions; cross-jurisdictional governance; social network analysis; international comparisons |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
