Cities cooperating beyond their boundaries: Evidence through experience in European cities

Cities cooperating beyond their boundaries: Evidence through experience in European cities

The paper ‘Cities cooperating beyond their boundaries: Evidence through experience in European cities’ represents the first outcomes of work carried out within the Economic Development Forum. Between December 2010 and September 2011, a group of officers regularly exchanged their experiences and developed common conclusions. Almost 40 cities were represented. These are very different in size, role and geographic background. Representatives from some of the main European capital cities (eg. Bratislava, Brussels, Budapest, Helsinki, Warsaw, Oslo and Vienna) worked together with major regional hubs (eg. Manchester, Barcelona, Katowice, Ghent, Lille and Munich), local city partnerships (Brabantstad), and even smaller cities, which may represent wider areas (eg. Linkoping, or Rennes) or be secondary centres in larger urban regions (eg. Terrassa or Preston).

Large cities face major challenges

Cities, especially the largest ones, are at the forefront of many of these challenges. They are where the majority of European people live and work, and where new lifestyles and new economic and social processes are invented and implemented. Cities are thus the places where European policies for innovation, competitiveness and cohesion are the most likely to have a strong positive impact and where their added value would be most visible. This also means they are where citizens’ confidence in the European integration process can be strengthened. As cities are the places where especially the cohesion challenges are most concentrated, we can see that solutions in many cases are hampered by competition and lack of cooperation between the governing agencies. In our view, new approaches to cooperation across metropolitan regions will greatly enhance their ability to contribute to Europe’s long term goals for sustainability and cohesion.

Metropolisation

The role of cities in Europe’s future is however limited in a number of ways. In this paper, the constraints that territorial boundaries place on cities are seen as a key limitation to their ability to act appropriately. The definition and demarcation of urban areas has become increasingly difficult in recent decades, due to the general process known as ‘metropolisation’. Metropolisation has happened all over Europe in such a way that the traditional boundaries between urban, suburban, peri-urban and rural areas have often become blurred. At the same time, the formal territorial boundaries for local and regional politics have remained unchanged for decades, or even centuries. Leaders and citizens in the old city boundaries and inherited systems of government are now endeavouring to develop and support innovative solutions to the challenges of tomorrow.

Improved governance arrangements crucial for major city challenges

In this paper it is argued that improved governance arrangements at the metropolitan area level are crucial for cities to address the major challenges listed above. Many of the challenges can be better understood and dealt with at this level, rather than within the historical administrative boundaries. Consequently, it has become necessary in many urban areas to set up new forms of cooperation or coalition between local authorities and between elected bodies and other stakeholders. This has already given us the current development of metropolitan governance arrangements that exists across much Europe, making up a semi-formal patchwork which works in parallel with the formal administrative boundaries.