Governing Functional Urban Regions – is the Principle of Subsidiarity Useful?

This chapter discusses the adequacy of scale, division of responsibilities and urban dynamics. It focuses on the principle of subsidiarity and demonstrates the difficulties in creating practical and workable new tiers of government. The principle of subsidiarity thus contains more than tangible considerations concerning scale versus tasks, it also entails an equally important abstract – solidarity. Subsidiarity deals with an economic approach towards administrative units and spatial solidarity. Europe's post-war history contains many ambitious attempts to govern and manage large functional urban regions, thereby creating one overall metropolitan government with smaller ancillary administrative units e.g., the Greater London Council and the Openbaar Lichaam Rijnmond evolving around Rotterdam. In a number of ways, the essence of the principle of subsidiarity makes it possible to combine the external and often global changes with internal democracy considerations. To deal with changing economic, environmental and.