Introduction

Abstract

This book is designed to be an empirical and theoretical contribution to debates on currently changing forms of urban policies and politics in Western Europe. To put it differently, the issue of multilevel urban governance analysis can be found at the heart of this work. Undoubtedly, political decision making in and for cities as well as the academic reflection upon it have been in flux throughout recent decades-and in most instances, these changes have been associated with all-encompassing macrostructural transformations that have left their imprint in virtually all Western European countries. For example, discussing phenomena such as the crisis of ‘Fordism’ and ‘national Keynesianism’ or the rise of economic globalization, urban scholars have come to ask what these shifts might imply for the political role of cities. Some have claimed that cities are likely to strengthen their role as politically relevant actors at the expense of national governments today, while others have diagnosed an overall decline of state regulation, ‘the political’, or even a general dissolution of ‘spaces of place’ in the information age (for overviews see Amin 1994; Blanke and Benzler 1991; Castells 2000). In other words, urban intellectuals have fragmented into different schools of thought, thereby often advancing antagonistic views as regards the present and future role of European cities as arenas and collective actors of politically relevant decision making.