2134/2454
Michael Hoyler
Michael
Hoyler
Tim Freytag
Tim
Freytag
Christoph Mager
Christoph
Mager
Advantageous fragmentation? Reimagining metropolitan governance and spatial planning in Rhine-Main
Loughborough University
2006
untagged
Earth Sciences not elsewhere classified
2006-10-27 08:32:51
Journal contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Advantageous_fragmentation_Reimagining_metropolitan_governance_and_spatial_planning_in_Rhine-Main/9483065
This paper traces the latest round of debates about appropriate scales and scopes of government and governance in Rhine-Main - an economically highly integrated but politically, territorially and emotionally divided region. We identify a downscaling of political power from the regional to the municipal level, and an upscaling of informal networking and image building to an extended regional scale. These countertrends are signs of a more complex geographical rearrangement in municipal and institutional relations. The inherent contradictions in the rescaling and reimagining of Rhine-Main are evident in the Strategic Vision for Frankfurt/Rhein-Main 2020. Its new conceptualization of Rhine-Main postulates complementary polycentricity as a competitive asset but remains firmly grounded in an institutional territorial logic that contravenes its own economically-driven agenda.