Abstract
This chapter investigates the mechanisms and channels of movements of governance elements between metropolitan regions. It will do this by examining various professional networks, and policy and expert communities. The aim is to investigate to what extent cities and regions which are members of these policy networks and communities have actively facilitated the transfer of procedural and institutional elements of metropolitan planning and governance to/from metropolitan regions. Besides focusing on the mechanisms and channels, the rationale and interests of those policymakers and planning professionals involved are of primary importance. As such, this chapter explores the challenges, limits and opportunities of the mutation and transfer of such elements of metropolitan planning and governance. It will also reveal knowledge about which policies and ideas travel—or not—and why.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
DiMaggio and Powell (1983) use ‘isomorphism’ to describe the result of an evolutionary process of organisational change in the field of organisations (such as enterprises, universities and local governments) that gets more alike through imitation or coercion.
- 2.
See, for instance, the executive masters Innovative Governance of Large Urban Systems (IGLUS) at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, ‘Cities are back in town’ at Science Po Urban School, Paris, or the programme simply called ‘Cities’ at the London School of Economics.
References
Ahrend, R., & Schumann, A. (2014). Approaches to metropolitan area governance: A country overview. OECD Regional Development Working Papers, 2014/03.
Ahrend, R., Gamper, C., & Schumann, A. (2014). The OECD metropolitan governance survey: A quantitative description of governance structures in large urban agglomerations. OECD Regional Development Working Papers, 2014/04.
Atkinson, R., & Rossignolo, C. (2010). Cities and the ‘soft side’ of Europeanization: The role of urban networks. In A. Hamedinger, & A. Wolffhardt (Eds.), The Europeanization of cities, urban change and urban networks (pp. 193–206). Amsterdam: Techne Press.
Béal, V., Renaud, E., & Pinson, G. (2018). Networked cities and steering states: Urban policy circulations and the reshaping of state-cities relationships in France. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 36(5), 796–815.
Benson, D., & Jordan, A. (2012). Policy transfer research: Still evolving, not yet through? Political Studies Review, 10(3), 333–338.
Benz, A., Kemmerzell, J., Knodt, M., & Tews, A. (2015). The trans-local dimension of local climate policy: Sustaining and transforming local knowledge orders through trans-local action in three German cities. Urban Research & Practice, 8(3), 319–335.
Blatter, J. (2006). Geographic scale and functional scope in metropolitan governance reform: Theory and evidence from Germany. Journal of Urban Affairs, 28(1), 121–150.
Bok, R., & Coe, N. (2017). Geographies of policy knowledge: The state and corporate dimensions of contemporary policy mobilities. Cities, 63(1), 51–57.
Brenner, N. (2004). Urban governance and the production of new state spaces in western Europe, 1960–2000. Review of International Political Economy, 11(3), 447–488.
Brenner, N. (2009). Open questions on state rescaling. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2(1), 123–139.
Caponio, T. (2018). Immigrant integration beyond national policies? Italian cities’ participation in European city networks. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(12), 2053–2069.
Città Metropolitana di Firenze. (2016). Verso un sistema di governance metropolitano: il modello Lione [Towards a metropolitan governance system: The Lyon model]. Florence: Città Metropolitana di Firenze.
DiMaggio, P. J., & Powell, W. W. (1983). The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. Am Sociol Rev, 48(2), 147–160.
Dolowitz, D. P., & Marsh, D. (2000). Learning from abroad: The role of policy transfer in contemporary policy making. Governance, 13(1), 5–25.
Evans, M. (2019). International policy transfer: Between the global and sovereign and between the global and local. In D. Stone, & K. Moloney (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of global policy and transnational administration. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fricke, C. (2020a). The European dimension of metropolitan policies: Policy learning and reframing of metropolitan regions. Berlin: Springer.
Fricke, C. (2020b). Implications of metropolitan policy mobility: Tracing the relevance of travelling ideas for metropolitan regions. In K. Zimmermann, D. Galland, & J. Harrison (Eds.), Metropolitan regions, planning and governance (pp. 115–130). Berlin: Springer.
Galland, D., & Harrison, J. (2020). Conceptualising metropolitan regions: How institutions, policies, spatial imaginaries and planning are influencing metropolitan development. In K. Zimmermann, D. Galland, & J. Harrison (Eds.), Metropolitan regions, planning and governance (pp. 1–21). Berlin: Springer.
Haas, P. M. (1992). Introduction: Epistemic communities and international policy coordination. International Organization, 46(1), 1–35.
Hakelberg, L. (2014). Governance by diffusion: Transnational municipal networks and the spread of local climate strategies in Europe. Global Environmental Politics, 14(1), 107–129.
Hambleton, R. (2016). English devolution: Learning lessons from international models of subnational governance. Research report for Local Government Association. https://www.local.gov.uk/english-devolution-learning-lessons-international-models-sub-national-governance. Acceded March 13, 2019.
Hartley, J., & Allison, M. (2002). Good, better, best? Inter-organizational learning in a network of local authorities. Public Management Review, 4(1), 101–118.
Heinelt, H., & Niederhafner, S. (2005). Cities and organized interest intermediation in the EU multi-level system. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung.
Heinelt, H., & Kübler, D. (Eds.). (2005). Metropolitan governance: Capacity, democracy and the dynamics of place. London: Routledge.
IPSP [International Panel on Social Progress]. (2018). Rethinking society for the 21st century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
James, O., & Lodge, M. (2003). The limitations of ‘policy transfer’ and ‘lesson drawing’ for public policy research. Policy Studies Review, 1(2), 179–193.
Jessop, B. (2008). State power. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Keiner, M., & Arley, K. (2007). Transnational city networks for sustainability. European Planning Studies, 15(10), 1369–1395.
Kern, K., & Bulkeley, H. (2009). Cities, Europeanization and multi-level governance: Governing climate change through transnational municipal networks. Journal of Common Market Studies, 47(2), 309–332.
Koppenjan, J. F. M., & Klijn, E.-H. (2004). Managing uncertainties in networks. London: Routledge.
KPMG. (2010). City typology as the basis for policy: Towards a tailor-made approach to the benchmarking and monitoring of the energy and climate policy of cities. Amstelveen: KPMG.
Labaeye, A., & Sauer, T. (2013). City networks and the socio-ecological transition: A European inventory. WWWforEurope Working Paper 27. Jena.
Lovering, J. (1999). Theory led by policy: The inadequacies of the ‘new regionalism’ (illustrated from the case of Wales). International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23(2), 379–395.
Lütz, S. (2007). Policy-transfer und policy-diffusion [Policy transfer and policy diffusion]. In A. Benz, & N. Dose (Eds.), Handbuch governance [Handbook of governance] (pp. 132–143). Berlin: Springer.
Marsh, D., & Sharman, J. C. (2009). Policy diffusion and policy transfer. Policy Studies, 30(3), 269–288.
McCann, E. (2011). Urban policy mobilities and global circuits of knowledge: toward a research agenda. Annals of Association of American Geographers, 101(1), 107–130.
McGuire, M., & Agranoff, R. (2011). The limitations of public management networks. Public Administration, 89(2), 265–284.
Norris, D. F. (2001). Prospects for regional governance under the new regionalism: Economic imperatives versus political impediments. Journal of Urban Affairs, 23(5), 557–571.
OECD. (2015). Governing the city. Paris: OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2016). OECD territorial reviews: The metropolitan region of Rotterdam-The Hague, Netherlands. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Payre, R. (2010). The importance of being connected: City networks and urban government—Lyon and Eurocities (1990–2005). International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(2), 260–280.
Peck, J. (2011). Geographies of policy: from transfer-diffusion to mobility mutation. Progress in Human Geography, 35(6), 773–797.
Powell, W. W. (1990). Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Research in Organizational Behavior, 12(3), 295–363.
PwC. (2016). Cities of opportunity. New York: PwC.
Robin, E., & Brill, F. (2018). The global politics of an urban age: creating ‘cities for all’ in the age of financialisation. Palgrave Communications, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-017-0056-6.
Schmitt, P. (2020). Learning from elsewhere? A critical account on the mobilisation of metropolitan policies. In K. Zimmermann, D. Galland, & J. Harrison (Eds.), Metropolitan regions, planning and governance (pp. 77–93). Berlin: Springer.
Siemens. (2009). Sustainable urban infrastructures. Munich: Siemens.
Siemens. (2011). German green city index. Munich: Siemens.
Siemens. (2018). Toolkit for resilient cities. Munich: Siemens.
Stone, D. (2004). Transfer agents and global networks in the ‘transnationalization’ of policy. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(3), 545–566.
Stone, D. (2008). Global public policy, transnational policy communities, and their networks. Policy Studies Journal, 36(1), 19–38.
Stone, D. (2012). Transfer and translation of policy. Policy Studies, 33(4), 483–499.
Straßheim, H. (2011). Netzwerkpolitik: Governance und Wissen im Administrativen Austausch [Network policy: Governance and knowledge in administrative exchange]. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Straßheim, H. (2013). Vernetzung als lokale Krisenstrategie? Perspektiven der interpretativen Governance- und Verwaltungsforschung [Networking as a local crisis strategy? Perspectives of interpretive governance and administration research]. In M. Haus, & S. Kuhlmann (Eds.), Lokale Politik und Verwaltung im Zeichen der Krise? [Local politics and administration in the sign of the crisis?] (pp. 121–138). Wiesbaden: Springer.
Theodore, N., & Peck, J. (2011). Framing neoliberal urbanism: Translating ‘commonsense’ urban policy across the OECD zone. European Urban and Regional Studies, 19(1), 20–41.
Urban Institute. (2018). Institutionalizing urban resilience: A midterm monitoring and evaluation report of 100 Resilient Cities. Washington DC: Urban Institute.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Zimmermann, K. (2020). From Here to There: Mapping the Metropolitan Politics of Policy Mobilities. In: Zimmermann, K., Galland, D., Harrison, J. (eds) Metropolitan Regions, Planning and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25632-6_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25632-6_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-25631-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-25632-6
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)