‘Who governs’ Berlin’s metropolitan region? The strategic-relational construction of metropolitan scale in Berlin–Brandenburg’s economic development policies

Abstract

‘Who governs’ Berlin’s metropolitan region—and how? The article addresses this question by inquiring into the way metropolitan space is being constituted in current economic development policies for Berlin–Brandenburg. It follows the hypothesis that no single-unitary understanding of metropolitan space exists in Berlin as expression of an explicit metropolitan project, but rather a heteronomy of policy practices which express diverse and possibly competing ‘implicit’ metropolitan issues and agendas. Accordingly, rescaling in the Berlin metropolitan region is not occurring in a comprehensive political–institutional form, as an ‘explicit project’. The more significant, however, is that rescaling is occurring—as an ‘implicit project’—through policy and governance practices which constitute a variety of understandings of metropolitan space. Metropolitan space appears therefore as an emerging construct defined by strategic-relational interplays between public and private actors and by the selective involvement of their interests and resources in the domain of specific spatial-economic development policies. Analyzing the construction of metropolitan space within specific policy arenas therefore offers a significant perspective on ‘who governs’ metropolitan development and on how this is possibly tied to the emergence of hegemonic understandings of scalar references for metropolitan policies.

Platform urbanism and the Chinese smart city: the co-production and territorialisation of Hangzhou City Brain

“…Our understanding of relationality is based on a heterogeneous body of literature that has sought to understand economic, geopolitical and cultural processes as constructed through mechanisms of negotiation, debate and argumentation that place relations and performances between actors at centre stage (Jessop and Sum 2018 ). The city, then, becomes a malleable ‘thing’ that is the ever-evolving product of interactions not only between actors, but between different actors’ understanding(s) of the same processes and urban realities (Gualini and Fricke 2019 ). These interactions, in turn, are involved in processes of co-production.…”

“…Another relational facet to the development of City Brain was the transformation of some branches of city government in order to interface with corporations, and other stakeholders active in the flow and interchange of data. This is a facet of relational co-production that is captured by the concept of malleability (Gualini and Fricke 2019 ). This is exemplified within Hangzhou by the setting up of a Bureau of Data Resource, founded in 2017 so as to enable the city to better standardise its approach to the use of digital data in urban services, and to maximise the utility of data gathered from platforms such as City Brain.…”

Regional Councils in a Global Context: Council Types and Council Elements

“…A lot of research dealing with regional councils of discussing governance structures and processes focusses on cases in the United States or in Europe [2,14,36,38,[48][49][50][51][52]. To overcome this research bias, a differentiation of five global areas has been set in advance: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa (see the five coloured sections in Figure 2).…”

“…Within the diverse possibilities of governing metropolitan regions-from developing "hard structures" by changing existing administrative and governance systems till governing by soft mechanisms through, e.g., developing spatial visions [15,16] or influencing discourses [36]-one possibility is the creation of regional councils [35,37]. Grigsby (1996) emphasises regional councils as one of the mechanisms thought capable of meeting changing challenges posed by changing global conditions [38].…”

Informal urbanisation and clientelism: Measuring the global relationship

“…Scholars across disciplines have long studied the relationships between political dynamics and urban growth, either through theoretical explorations (MacLeod, 2011; Molotch, 1976; Ortalo-Magné and Prat, 2014; Phelps and Wood, 2011) or qualitative studies and narrative accounts of individual metropolitan areas (e.g. Atlanta (Keating, 2001), Berlin (Gualini and Fricke, 2019), Brisbane (Clarke and Cheshire, 2018), Toronto (Frisken, 2007), Stockholm and Amsterdam (Bossuyt and Savini, 2018)), states (e.g. Florida (Feiock, 2004), Massachusetts (Hawkins, 2014)), or countries (e.g.…”