¿Metrópolis ingobernables? Experiencias europeas

Abstract

Metropolitan areas have become places where some of the major issues and stakes for the government of our societies are taking place (social and territorial inequalities, economic development, the question of ethnical and cultural diversity, environmental preservation, etc.). However, in spite of their relevance as spaces to address these issues, metropolitan areas have great difficulties to become political territories, that is to reach a sufficient political agency (act as collective actor) to produce adequate policies to deal with these issues and to produce collective strategies to orient their future development. To substantiate this statement, the article will first focus on the major obstacles which prevent metropolitan areas to reach agency and which are common to most of European countries: the resistance of the State to grant these territories with adequate competences and resources in the decentralization process and its preference towards the strengthening of existing governmental tiers; the opposition of these governmental tiers along with the lack of support from civil society (economic actors and the inhabitants). In a second section, the article will present the various experiences launched in the last decade to alleviate these obstacles. Focusing on the pacification of power relations at the metropolitan level through metropolitan conferences and metropolitan charters and pacts and on ‘procedural policies’ such as strategic planning, the author estimates that these experiences do not seem to offer the potentialities to reduce political conflicts between actors and concludes with a pessimist tone on the unlikely governability of metropolitan areas.