Exploring metropolitan governance in the Öresund Region

Abstract: For the first time in history, more people in the world live in urban areas than in rural areas. Almost half of this world urban population now live in metropolitan areas, which are becoming central spaces of world economic and social activity, and where major global challenges happen and should be tackled. Metropolitan areas are defined by urban spaces of integrated mobility flows and markets, but also by high institutional fragmentation and political decomposition. This fragmentation interferes in decision-making processes leading to difficulties for the design and implementation of adequate responses to metropolitan problems. In this context, the study of how metropolitan areas should be governed is gaining relevance in the field of urban studies, among other fields. The normative debates about metropolitan governance has been framed by three traditions. From the 60s to the late 80s these debates were restricted to the ‘old regionalism’ dialectics between the metropolitan reform and public choice scholars. More recently, new regionalism recognize in flexible and cooperative governance instruments the most effective way to deal with metropolitan problems. From this perspective metropolitan areas are governed by complex governance relations between diverse actors through multiple and concurrent instruments, in the form of policy networks, voluntary cooperation, strategic planning, and so on. The Öresund Region is a metropolis that spans from eastern Denmark to southern Sweden, and includes cities such as Copenhagen and Malmö. While it has been largely referenced and praised as an example of cross-border metropolitan area, there is little evidence on how it is governed or which are the main governance instruments or who are the actors involved in the policy-making process. Taking an original approach to the study of metropolitan governance, this paper represents a first attempt to identify and understand the main features of metropolitan governance in the Öresund Region as a system, in a polycentric and multilayered crossborder metropolis. The results suggest that metropolitan governance in the Öresund Region is very ambiguous, with several agents acting in different and non-coincident scales, strongly focused in hard policies and development policies in contrast to social and environmental policy areas. Also, there are persistent barriers to cross-border governance despite the favorable context. And finally, there is a relevant democratic governance deficit, in terms of social actors’ participation and involvement in the metropolitan decision-making process. These first results recommend to go forward with further research in this issue. Particularly to grasp about governance networks operatives, policy-making processes, and citizens’ political orientations to, ultimately, propose improvements for a more effective, comprehensive and democratic governance in the Öresund metropolitan region.