Conceptualising metropolitan regions: how institutions, policies, spatial imaginaries and planning are influencing metropolitan development

The need for effective metropolitan governance and planning has never been so great. In this chapter we argue that despite an inspiring debate on the issues of metropolitan change, planning and governance contributions which develop and operationalise broader frameworks for analysis are relatively scarce. Approaching metropolitan regions and metropolitan questions has typically taken one of two perspectives – the specificities of individual cases or establishing general principles. Here we argue for an alternative approach. Our own approach for conceptualising the planning and governance of metropolitan regions is a heuristic perspective which, due to its focus on thematic, temporal and phronetic approaches we refer to as the TTP framework.