2015

This article questions the integration processes in three small cross-border metropolitan areas: Luxembourg, Basel and Geneva. By referring to an original analysis framework, it evaluates the nature and intensity of the functional and institutional integration and highlights the elements that structure the cooperation between the actors. The analysis shows that there is not necessarily a reciprocal link between the size of the functional area and the extent of the cooperation. Whilst no metropolitan-sized project is on the agenda in Luxembourg, the example of Basel and Geneva shows that the presence of a national border offers an opportunity to invent original forms of governance, increase the autonomy of the local authorities by different types of cooperation which transcend the institutional and territorial divides, and enable the international character of the metropolitan centre to be valued for what it is. In a context of global competition, these features represent an undeniable benefit.

Space and Polity, 2014

Metropolitan regions have become one of the most appropriate scales to define efficient governance networks for economic and territorial development. The state still is the key actor of these partnerships. Yet the question remains whether cross-border metropolitan regions represent a new point of reference that puts state power in question or whether they only reorganise it. The centrality of state power will be examined by looking at two networks of actors (public transport and territorial marketing) working at the Eurometropolis Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai. The results reveal that a triple-faceted state power has emerged to define and organise cross-border metropolitan management.

Who governs when nobody governs?» This question is addressed by looking at phenomena that have become characteristic of cities today: violence, crime, immigration, mobility. Answering this question also requires paying more attention to different forms of regulation: state, market, along with cooperative/reciprocal modes of regulation. Risk embodies these different forms: it has become a common way of framing and addressing a wide variety of urban problems, suggesting that to govern is to identify and to manage vulnerabilities through different modes of regulation. Lastly, the question points to the uncertainty that characterizes city borders: these are constantly being redefined both by demographics, urbanization and political reforms.

2013

This article is concerned with the role of national governments in the rescaling of cross-border metropolitan governance structures in Europe. In the context of emergent cross-border metropolitan regions, the objective is to highlight the structuring effects of support policies to metropolitan areas at national level, in the context of their politics of scales, on the scalar configurations developed by local and regional actors. Using a comparative approach, the cases of Basel, Geneva and Luxembourg are singled out. The confrontation between German, Swiss and French state policies, and the modalities of the rescaling of levels of governance within the three cross-border metropolitan regions, allows us to underline the considerable influence of national guidelines on scalar reconfigurations. The structuring role of governments in this ‘new cross-border regionalism’ needs to be relativized, however, in functions of the specific characteristics of each context as well as factors relating to the actors involved.

Journal of Urban Affairs, 2004

EU Regional and Urban Policy, 2019

The chapter seeks to illustrate and comment on the role assigned to cities and urban policy in the European integration project in order critically understand the current programming period as a result of an intricate and complex history. It provides a synthetic reconstruction of the process that led to the constitution of spaces and tools for action in the urban field, first within the creation and, later, the consolidation of the European Union. To do so, it will develop the topic around two key perspectives considered essential for illustrating the specificity and importance of the EU integration project along with its limits and contradictions. The first point of view regards politics and problem setting, reconstructing first why and when the urban entered the European agenda implicitly or explicitly; then the definition of the policy issue regarding how the urban question been conceptualized follows. What ideas of the urban supported the definition of the policy problem? The second key perspective has to do with problem solving in terms of policy design and governance. What has EU been able to do for cities? With which policy tools/forms or models of governance? The aim of this paragraph is to provide an account of the experiments and to open to the innovation that the EU integration project has provided both in the urban policy field in terms of theory and practices. The chapter will also provide some final thoughts about the future of urban policy during the next economic programming period, and introduce some remarks regarding the peculiar contribution of the EU experience to the broader international debate on the New Urban Agenda. Keywords Urban agenda • Urban policy • Cities • Urban question

2007

Throughout Western Europe, metropolitan governance is back on the agenda: since the early 1990s, new forms of citysuburban cooperation, regional coordination, region-wide spatial planning and metropolitan institutional reform have been promoted in major city-regions. In contrast to the forms of metropolitan governance that prevailed during the Fordist-Keynesian period, which emphasized administrative modernization, interterritorial equalization and the efficient delivery of public services, the newest wave of metropolitan governance is focused upon economic priorities such as territorial competitiveness and the imperative to attract external capital investment in the context of geoeconomic and European integration. This article develops an interpretation of the new metropolitan governance in Western Europe in two steps: First, the new metropolitan governance is situated in historical context by underscoring its qualitative differences from earlier waves of metropolitan institutional reform in Western European city-regions. Second, and on this basis, an interpretation of the new metropolitan regionalism in Western Europe is briefly introduced as a new form of locational politics (Standortpolitik) that is emerging in response to some of the failures and contradictions of earlier approaches to local economic development policy. From this perspective, contemporary forms of metropolitan institutional reform are key expressions of ongoing processes of state rescaling through which territorial competitiveness

Many reasons account for the contemporary decreasing power of nation States throughout Europe. First of all, the end of the “traditional” wars occurred during the so called "short twentieth century", has undermined the characterization of the nation State as the only entity able to safeguard the defense of national territory. By way of contrast, the emergence of “new financial wars” has showed the inefficient and inappropriate dimension of the nation State in addressing the problems related to the transnational nature of stocks and finance. Second, increasing migration in many developed countries—such as the founding Member States of the European Union— has infringed upon the cohesion of national identity. Actually, the merging of cultures has enhanced the “exclusivity” of particular communities to the detriment of the “inclusivity” of the nation. In other words, nation States are challenged on the one hand by the continuing conferral of competencies to the EU, and on the other by the delegation of competencies to local authorities (what is referred to as “institutional localism”).