ABSTRACT
Governance of city regions is not just a concern in the United States. Growth of urban areas has created the same governance issues in other countries that are evident in America where the population and economic boundaries of metropolitan areas do not neatly fit into arbitrary political boundaries. This chapter briefly looks at how selected metropolitan areas outside the United States have responded or are responding to the governing issues faced by metropolitan areas. The major focus of this chapter is European countries as these countries during the colonial period had a major influence on local governance in other parts of the world. It is interesting to see how other countries adapted and changed the governing institutions to fit their own culture. Also, many countries had local governing institutions that go back thousands of years but had to adjust to the rapid urbanization of the twentieth century and the rise of citizen demands for more local government control. Moreover, in the global economy that is clearly evident in the twenty-first century, metropolitan areas across the world compete with each other for development. Available evidence indicates that those metropolitan areas whose governments are more united with the public and private sectors working together, all else being equal, appear to be more successful at attracting development. 1 By the study of other countries and their efforts to provide regional governing solutions, we can appreciate the global nature of regional governance problems and possibly gain new ideas and insights for metropolitan governance. Other countries in their efforts to provide regional governance solutions have tried many of the same approaches that have been described and analyzed in previous chapters.
