ABSTRACT
Metropolitan coordination is not created from a product-approach of separate territorial governments but should be perceived as a process of learning in private and public coalitions of governance. The introductory chapter characterised the challenge of metropolitan coordination as a fascinating multi-actor and multilevel game with manifold conflicting and cooperating powers. It is a complicated game with many impediments and differing values, interests and resources of power and authority. If the idea of metropolitan governance is to teach us anything, it is undoubtedly that solutions to the problems of coordination and spatial planning are not to be found in the mere establishment of new encompassing territorial government but in new methods of ‘organising connectivity’. The institutional problem is not so much the fragmentation of policy actors as the disconnectedness of learning practices and policies. Metropolitan policies are made in private sector domains (in the cultural and economic diversity of international and local networks), in European programmes, in national policies and in manifold initiatives within the metropolitan setting. There is of course a lot of power asymmetry in these relationships, but they are not structured according to a one-dimensional top-down format. The main challenge to metropolitan policies is to find the keys to unlock the connections between different spheres of action.
