| Abstract |
Metropolitan regions have become the dominant economic units in global society. The multiple networks of organizations that govern growth in metropolises extend far beyond the geographic bounds of any particular region, and involve multiple levels of government. Large institutional networks are the emerging form of these multi-scalar interactions. That metropolitan region planning institutions are comprised of this new composite, termed Multi-Scalar Large Institutional Networks, has implications for theory, practice, and research because they evolve, learn, and act on emergent phenomena and via emergent processes in extraordinarily complex and dynamic settings in ways radically distinct from individual organizations and institutions. This article assesses institutional theory in this framework, focusing on institutional design and performance.
This article explores the connections among three strands of the rich debate on metropolitan region planning – networks, governance, and scaling – in a critical review. The common threads of these concepts are then linked under a single theoretical rubric, multi-scalar large institutional networks.
The importance of metropolitan governance has been augmented as national and regional governments devolve functions and localities cooperate amongst themselves at their own initiative to solve inter-jurisdictional problems; and as regional identity vies with national identity in regions where historic place-based influences such as language and culture reassert themselves in the face of oppressive or restrictive national policy and global homogenization. In these circumstances, metropolitan region governance gain importance. How these governance institutions assert their influence varies widely. In some instances, metropolitan government is constitutionally legitimated, such as in Portland, Oregon and Brussels, Belgium. In other places, it has a checkered history, as in London. In some places such as New York, an NGO, the Regional Plan Association, and a bi-state quasi-public authority, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, both conduct regional planning. In others, associations of local governments plan as best they can, applying a disparate range of instruments and will to back them, depending on local and larger scale politics. Often, a mix of individual sectoral-functional agencies (transport, water, air, other) independently plan and manage their own slice of the regional pie. Many national and regional (state, provincial) constitutions do not authorize metropolitan government as a separate, independent unit. One response has been the formation of self-made regional governance coalitions
Many metropolises are not governed by a single governmental entity This situation is compounded by the variety in the types of subnational territorial governments among nations around the globe. If most metropolises are not governed by a single entity, then to the extent that they are governed, it occurs by governance shared through a network of local jurisdictions. These may number over one thousand in a large metropolis (including public utility districts and school districts, both of which can tax and/or levy fees, float bonds, and often have leadership elected by popular vote). In the US, the New York metropolitan region of twenty million inhabitants spans four states, scores of counties, dozens of regional functional entities, and hundreds of cities, towns, townships, boroughs, school districts, and utility districts.
Metropolitan governance is complicated by the inter-relationships that metropolitan areas and their localities have with larger levels of government, all the way to the United Nations and its affiliates. In this light, responsibilities and functions are scattered.
Metropolitan institutional networks extend far beyond the geographic bounds of any particular region, and involve multiple scales or levels of government. The notion of scale or level of governance is a hold over from an ontology based on hierarchy. The term level implies superordination and subordination, and precise delineation and demarcation. Scale, on the other hand, refers to size and extension, and relative comparison. Scale has been resurgent in government, policy, and institutional discourses because the “reterritorialization” of the economic and social spheres is exerting its imprint on the public sector (Keating 1997). Neither scale nor level captures well the flexible network geometries of governments forming coalitions on functional-sectoral lines as they struggle to compete in continental and global arenas and cooperate in local and regional ones. This multi-networked and multi-scalar reality manifests a different ontology from hierarchy. The new ontology is based on centers/nodes, connections among them, and the webs they form. Networks perform different types of work than hierarchies. They enable and serve different functions and purposes. To the extent that this reasoning is valid, why do we still use the terms “level” and “scale” in network debates?
Understanding the forms and functions of multi-scalar large institutional networks is a step in taking new institutionalism to new ground. Schenkel has it right, urban governance is increasingly by network management. What precisely those networks are, how they operate, and how they can be (re)designed are the foci of this paper. |
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