ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to identify the directions of metropolitan strategy approaching the millennium. The chapter aim's to identify similarities and contrasts in the approach and content of strategies, highlight major common problems and issues and reflect on the general effectiveness and aptness of metropolitan planning approaches in the United Kingdom. The history of strategic planning guidance, more recently regional planning guidance, and the response of English metropolitan authorities contrast with those of the Scottish and Welsh approaches, with their different local government settings and their relationships with central government departments. The case study explains, on the one hand, about the history of different attempts since the early 1970s in England to accommodate a demand for strategic planning co-ordination in the context of a shifting institutional basis for metropolitan government/governance. On the other hand, comparison between the different country settings, particularly the Scottish-English contrast, has lessons for the relative advantages of formally constituted strategic metropolitan frameworks over informal ones.
