For the first time in history, more people in the world live in urban areas than in rural
areas. Almost half of this world urban population now live in metropolitan areas, which
are becoming central spaces of world economic and social activity, and where major
global challenges happen and should be tackled.
Metropolitan areas are defined by urban spaces of integrated mobility flows and markets,
but also by high institutional fragmentation and political decomposition. This
fragmentation interferes in decision-making processes leading to difficulties for the
design and implementation of adequate responses to metropolitan problems. In this
context, the study of how metropolitan areas should be governed is gaining relevance in
the field of urban studies, among other fields.
The normative debates about metropolitan governance has been framed by three
traditions. From the 60s to the late 80s these debates were restricted to the ‘old
regionalism’ dialectics between the metropolitan reform and public choice scholars. More
recently, new regionalism recognize in flexible and cooperative governance instruments
the most effective way to deal with metropolitan problems. From this perspective
metropolitan areas are governed by complex governance relations between diverse actors
through multiple and concurrent instruments, in the form of policy networks, voluntary
cooperation, strategic planning, and so on.
The Öresund Region is a metropolis that spans from eastern Denmark to southern
Sweden, and includes cities such as Copenhagen and Malmö. While it has been largely
referenced and praised as an example of cross-border metropolitan area, there is little
evidence on how it is governed or which are the main governance instruments or who are
the actors involved in the policy-making process.
Taking an original approach to the study of metropolitan governance, this paper
represents a first attempt to identify and understand the main features of metropolitan
governance in the Öresund Region as a system, in a polycentric and multilayered crossborder
metropolis.
The results suggest that metropolitan governance in the Öresund Region is very
ambiguous, with several agents acting in different and non-coincident scales, strongly
focused in hard policies and development policies in contrast to social and environmental
policy areas. Also, there are persistent barriers to cross-border governance despite the
favorable context. And finally, there is a relevant democratic governance deficit, in terms
of social actors’ participation and involvement in the metropolitan decision-making
process.
These first results recommend to go forward with further research in this issue.
Particularly to grasp about governance networks operatives, policy-making processes,
and citizens’ political orientations to, ultimately, propose improvements for a more
effective, comprehensive and democratic governance in the Öresund metropolitan region.