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.
History
School
Social Sciences
Department
Geography and Environment
Pages
2167008 bytes
Citation
HOYLER, M., FREYTAG, T. and MAGER, C., 2006. Advantageous fragmentation? Reimagining metropolitan governance and spatial planning in Rhine-Main. Built Environment, 32(2), pp.124-136.