Governance and Planning in Metropolitan Regions. An international Comparison of Germany, Italy and France

由于福利国家的变化和日益激烈的全球竞争，欧洲许多国家正在重新定义大都市区的功能。在一些国家，如法国和意大利，但也德国，我们观察到规模特定的治理安排和规划政策的出现。上述国家的发展情况说明了不同的路径：在德国，自下而上，缓慢，因此取决于区域背景，在法国和意大利，更多的是自上而下，中央政府给予强烈的激励。 区域规划有不同的侧重点。拟议的研究的目标是描述和随后的分析，在国家空间发展政策的大都市区的概念在三个国家的发展路径。拟议的研究项目旨在找出我们是否可以观察到发散或收敛的发展。从经验上讲，比较是围绕四个方面组织的：制度方面，功能方面（竞争，福利政策），思想（原因和论据）和空间方面。这种差异化的方法可以更细致地描述收敛或发散的发展。实证研究采用多层次比较法。我们比较了每个州内的两个地区和三个州和六个地区。因此，我们可以区分国家和地方/区域的影响。

The function of metropolitan regions is currently re-defined in many European states due to changes in the welfare states and ever increasing global competition. In some states such as France and Italy, but also Germany we observe the emergence of scale specific governance arrangements and planning policies. The developments in the mentioned states ilustrate different pathways: in Germany bottom-up, slowly and therefore contingent upon regional contexts, in France and Italy more top down with strong incentives given by central government. Regional planning is given different emphasis. The objective of the proposed research is the description and subsequent analysis of the development paths in national spatial development policies with regard to the concept of metropolitan regions in the three states. The proposed research projects seeks to find out if we can observe divergent or convergent developments. Empirically the comparison is organised around four dimensions: institutional aspects, functional aspects (competition, welfare policies), Ideas (reasons and arguments) and spatial aspects. This differentiated approach allows for a more nuanced description of convergent or divergent developments. The emprical approach follows a multilevel-comparison. We compare two regions within each state and three states and six regions in total. In consequence we can distinguish national from local/regional influences.