ancient cities

506 Metropolitan Governance
Metropolitan has also come to take on other meanings
derived from the city and urban life, in this case
referencing the cultural life of the city. The Metropolitan
Magazine, published in Great Britain from 1833
through 1850, was intended for a cosmopolitan audience,
with travel narratives and literature from around
the world; a magazine of the same title appeared in
New York from 1903 to 1911, and another with the
shortened title Metropolitan was published from 1895
to 1925. Metropolitan has also been used as branding
for products, including things as disparate as the
Nash/Hudson Metropolitan automobile, produced
from 1954 to 1962, and the New York Metropolitans
baseball team (most often shortened to the New York
Mets). In more recent years, the term metrosexual has
come into use, derived from Mark Simpson’s descriptions
in The Independent: “Metrosexual Man, the
single young man with a high disposable income, living
or working in the city (because that’s where all the
best shops are), is perhaps the most promising consumer
market of the decade.”
In most of these examples, metropolitan refers to
a larger urban region, to institutions that serve the
urban region, or to cultural attributes associated
with urban areas. One additional use, however,
remains true to the original meaning of the mother
city and colonies, and that is the French designation
of Metropolitan France. This dates from the colonial
period, when France was called the metropole,
the mother city to the various territories and colonies
where French was spoken (there was a similar
usage by other European colonial powers). The
term metropole is used to distinguish France from
the overseas territories; the term Metropolitan
France includes mainland France and Corsica.
Ray Hutchison
See also Megalopolis; Metropolitan Governance;
Metropolitan Region; Suburbanization; Urban
Agglomeration; Urban Politics
Further Readings
Gottman, Jean and Robert A. Harper, eds. 1990. Since
Megalopolis: The Urban Writings of Jean Gottman.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
McKelvey, Blake. 1968. The Emergence of Metropolitan
America, 1915–1966. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
Simpson, Mark. 1994. “Here Come the Mirror Men.”
The Independent, November 15.
Me t r o P o l i t a n go v e r n a n c e
Metropolitan governance refers to a two-fold process
of consolidating a new political space at the
metropolitan scale, which involves intrametropolitan
conflicts as well as political transformation
through new governing instruments and interestmediation
mechanisms, and consolidating the
metropolis as a collective actor in intergovernmental
relations, global markets, and international
politics. In brief, it entails profound transformations
of the role of the city in the political process.
The debate around metropolitan governance is
not new. At the turn of the twentieth century, a
reform movement in the United States pushed for
redefining urban politics, among other ways, by
consolidating municipalities to counter a political
fragmentation that was seen as fostering inequity,
inefficiencies, and failures in the democratic system.
In the post–World War II period, public choice
theorists proposed instead that political fragmentation
was a necessary condition for liberty, efficiency,
and democracy. Charles Tiebout privileged
the individual right to “vote with one’s feet” when
dissatisfied with the tax service package offered in
a municipality. The ability for people to “shop”
their residential location and to choose their neighbors
was thought to produce more efficiency in
delivering services and more democracy.
On the other hand, early reformers such as
Chester Maxey trusted bureaucratic planning more
than the aggregation of individual decisions.
Planning was viewed as the most efficient means to
effective service delivery and the most democratic
solution, given that consolidation and tax sharing
permitted a more uniform and equitable governance
system throughout the metropolitan region.
The resurgence of interest in metropolitan governance
in the 1990s came hand in hand with debates
on the political effects of global economic restructuring.
New regionalism is a label that conveys two
meanings. First, effective metropolitan governance
does not necessarily require municipal consolidation;
it may be better to think in terms of a shift from governmental
reform to new governance mechanisms.
The notion of political territory is thereby replaced by
a more fluid concept of political space. Second,
the increasing importance of city-regions as collective
actors in the global market and within national
intergovernmental relations is a sign of a profound