Local institutional fragmentation (communes, districts, etc.) is a central parameter of governance systems in urban regions. The literature establishes its influence on patterns of governance and on the development of urban regions, but empirical research remains incomplete, particularly with regard to European urban regions in Europe. In this context, our research aims to characterize their local institutional fragmentation. Based on the analysis of 257 urban areas of more than 300.000 inhabitants, we developed a typology based on 11 fragmentation indicators. We have used the most recent developments in the European statistical system to develop an original database. This research contributes to the understanding of governance processes and demonstrates the strong heterogeneity of institutional fragmentation contexts in urban regions. This variability is partly dependent on national contexts, demonstrating the weak convergence of governance situations despite European integration. However, this heterogeneity is also subnational, demonstrating the importance of local contexts in the production of territorial appropriation systems. These results can be used for comparative analyses. The statistical analysis of fragmentation indicators and their links with territorial indicators demonstrates the existence of relationships between territorial characteristics and institutional fragmentation. However, these results nuance the scientific results obtained in the North American context, and in particular the existence of relationships between, on the one hand, economic and demographic development and, on the other, local institutional fragmentation. ; Peer reviewed
Depuis plusieurs décennies, l'échelle métropolitaine a gagné en importance en raison de l'évolution spatiale des régions urbaines, du positionnement central des métropoles dans l'économie mondialisée et des transformations dans l'organisation des États. Dans ce contexte, le devenir des institutions métropolitaines a gagné en importance auprès des décideurs politiques, des citoyens, des entreprises et des chercheurs. Malgré le rôle central des aspects spatiaux dans les dynamiques de gouvernance urbaine, la littérature scientifique relative aux « recompositions territoriales » et à la « mise à l'échelle métropolitaine » n'offre pas de cadre analytique des facteurs et des processus de transformation de la spatialité des gouvernements métropolitains. Dans cet article, nous suggérons d'adopter un modèle analytique du changement institutionnel pour une meilleure prise en compte de ces évolutions en l'appliquant aux frontières des gouvernements métropolitains. Le modèle analytique prend en considération les pressions exercées par et sur les aspects spatiaux de la gouvernance ainsi que les différentes phases de leurs transformations. L'analyse empirique des processus dans la région urbaine de Liège (Belgique) a vérifié l'utilité et la robustesse de cette grille de lecture. ; Peer reviewed
The governance of urban regions is a central research topic of urban sciences, and a major challenge for urban actors. In this research, we contribute to the analysis of governance processes by studying the transformation of its spatiality in intermediate European urban regions. Our research postulates the intrinsically spatial nature of urban governance, and is based on three hypotheses: (1) the territorial characteristics of urban regions relate to local politico-administrative fragmentation, (2) the characteristics of politico-administrative fragmentation relate to the construction of a governance scale for urban regions, and (3) governance structures at the level of urban regions relate to territorial characteristics. In order to test these hypotheses, we conducted a research in three complementary parts. The first part is devolted to the state of the art on governance, territorial rescaling and institutional change. The second part analyses quantitatively the politico-administrative fragmentation of 123 intermediate European urban regions, and its links with territorial indicators. The third part analyses qualitatively the processes of transformation of spatial governance in the urban regions of Saint-Étienne (France), Metz (France), Sheffield (United Kingdom) and Liège (Belgium). This complementary research confirms the existence of links between the different aspects of spatiality in the governance of intermediate urban regions in Europe, and concludes that the recomposition processes are intrinsically spatial, territorial and multiscalar. ; La gouvernance des régions urbaines constitue un domaine central des sciences urbaines et un enjeu majeur pour les acteurs urbains. Dans cette recherche, nous contribuons à l'analyse des processus de gouvernance par l'étude de la transformation de sa spatialité dans les régions urbaines intermédiaires européennes. Notre recherche postule du caractère intrinsèquement spatial de la gouvernance des régions urbaines et repose sur trois hypothèse : (1) les caractéristiques territoriales des régions urbaines ont des relations avec la fragmentation politico-administrative locale, (2) les caractéristiques de fragmentation politico-locale ont des relations avec la construction d'une échelle de gouvernance pour les régions urbaines, (3) les structures de gouvernance à l'échelle des régions urbaines ont des liens avec les caractéristiques territoriales. Afin de tester ces hypothèses, nous avons mené une recherche en trois parties complémentaires. La première partie est relative à l'état de l'art sur la gouvernance, les recompositions territoriales et le changement institutionnel. La seconde partie est consacrée à une analyse quantitative de la fragmentation politico-administrative de 123 régions urbaines urbaines intermédiaires et de ses liens avec des indicateurs territoriaux. La troisième partie est consacrée à l'analyse qualitative des processus de transformation de la spatialité de la gouvernance dans les régions urbaines de Saint-Étienne (France), Metz (France), Sheffield (Royaume-Uni) et Liège (Belgique). Ces recherches complémentaires permettent de confirmer l'existence de liens entre les différents aspects de la spatialité de la gouvernance des régions urbaines intermédiaires européennes et concluent au caractère intrinsèquement spatial, territorial et multiscalaire des processus de recomposition.
Nowadays, the attractiveness of cities and metropolitan areas seems to be a central challenge for competitiveness, territorial cohesion and economic development on a European and regional scale (European Commission, 2009). The interest carried by actors of territorial development on large urban areas and metropolises is essentially explained by their relative weight in regional economies and their role of catalyst for sustainable development. In the absence of competitive cities, many experts estimate that territories cannot completely develop their socio-economic potential. This report is one of the bases of the strategy for city polycentric systems recommended by the development scheme of the European Community space (SDEC - European Commission, 1999), renewed in many strategic European "papers". This strategy rose during the last decades whereas the dynamic affecting urban areas was strongly modified by the increase in mobility through two scales. On one hand, the intra-urban scale refers to processes of exurbanisation, urban sprawl, as well as functional and institutional fragmentation. On the other hand, the interurban scale has shown phenomenons of metropolisation and an increase in exchanges between cities. Cities changes, networks and urban hierarchies which result from this dynamic, apply new tensions on urban areas - in particular the biggest of them. Theses tensions have to be answered to avoid any loss of competitiveness. In this context, the 'good governance' of urban areas is often presented like an essential factor for their development. It is necessary to understand through the notion of "governance" the definition from Le Galès (1995) that is "a process of coordination of actors, social groups, and institutions to achieve clear goals discussed and defined collectively in split up environments". Thus, cities governance (but also networks of cities) acts on the whole "city system" through all its complexity. The predominant role of governance generally takes the shape of a postulate, as well in the scientific world as in the active and political discourse. Nevertheless, the relation between the governance of urban areas/ cities/ metropolises and their absolute versus relative evolution in networks is not a subject for abundant theoretical studies nor empirical validations. Considering its rasing importance within territorial development policies, it must be clarified allowing a new and quantified highlight on strategies of most important urban areas. While general objectives of urban "good governance" are clearly identified in many documents, concrete impacts of governance on the urban development are ambiguous and unclear. In addition, the definition of "good governance" is regularly paradigm-oriented and often dedicated to the third world or emergent countries (as heritage of many international organisations politic which promotes development and trade efficiency). Furthermore, it appears that former studies on European and North-American cities are relatively factual and suggest a poor typology of the governance in urban areas. They are consequently not very useful for the development of a conceptual model that associates competitiveness of cities and urban governance. Consequently, our research aims at considering the impacts of governance on cities and metropolises through a set of "keys to understanding" theoretically based. We lead our work to a critical analysis of literature in order to highlight expected interactions between governance and urban territories. The construction of a conceptual scheme of interactions will allow the identification of useful indicators of governance. The identification of a set of indicators to measure governance characteristics is valuable for an objective analysis in this field of research. It should allow more precise analyses and the construction of typologies that include multi-dimensional sides of governance. We will focus our attention on European metropolises and cities systems taking into account European specificities of towns, territories and political contexts. As described above, the study is based on reviewing the state-of-art of governance theories (transaction cost, path dependency, management efficiency, etc.) and on exploiting literature about cities competitiveness (characteristics of competitive cities, measurements.). Our conceptual development of a scheme of interactions between governance and urban territories will allow to deal with the issue of governance indicators. Our theory will be tested through samples of European cities (> 500.000 inhabitants). Existing databases will allow the processing of many indicators at the European scale. The choice of a set of indicators will be carried out on the basis of discriminating statistical analysis and conceptual model of interaction allowing the reduction of the variables number. The critical analysis will take into account papers from European Commission and national governments about "good governance" and "cities management". ; Peer reviewed
International audience ; This article presents the carried out researches within the framework of the creation of an indicators gate for the local actors. We evaluate in this one the accessible territorial data for the actors, and the cartographic files of the administrative or statistical entities to represent them. We analyze the sources of information, and determine its accessibility in the various countries of the European Union. We moreover deal with problems of the relevant territorial scales and cartographic representation of the data. ; Cet article rend compte des recherches effectuées dans le cadre de la création d'un portail d'indicateurs pour les acteurs locaux. Nous évaluons dans celui-ci les données territoriales accessibles pour les acteurs, et les fichiers cartographiques des entités administratives ou statistiques pour les représenter. Nous analysons les sources de l'information, et déterminons son accessibilité dans les différents pays de l'Union européenne. Nous traitons en outre de la problématique des échelles territoriales pertinentes et de la représentation cartographique des données.
La fragmentation des institutions locales dans les régions urbaines constitue l'une des caractéristiques principales des système de gouvernance métropolitaine en Europe. La communication présente une typologie de la fragmentation locale basée sur des indicateurs absolus et relatifs. La méthodologie est appliquée aux 257 régions urbaines européennes de plus de 300 000 habitants pour réaliser la première cartographie de cet indicateur. ; The fragmentation of local institutions in urban areas is one of the main features of metropolitan governance systems in Europe. The paper presents a typology of local fragmentation based on absolute and relative indicators. The methodology is applied to the 257 European urban regions with more than 300,000 inhabitants to carry out the first mapping of this indicator. ; Peer reviewed
Local authorities are central actors in the governance of European intermediate urban regions. In this paper, we propose a methodology to analyse the fragmentation of local authorities within 119 urban regions. We tested several European databases to create indicators of fragmentation and to develop a typology of fragmentation within cities. Our results show that the Eurostat Cities programme gives a consistent spatial definition of urban regions and that their fragmentation is mainly influenced by national contexts. The developed methodology is a contribution to the debate on territorial reforms and urban governance transformations.
Local authorities are central actors in the governance of European intermediate urban regions. In this paper, we propose a methodology to analyse the fragmentation of local authorities within 119 urban regions. We tested several European databases to create indicators of fragmentation and to develop a typology of fragmentation within cities. Our results show that the Eurostat Cities programme gives a consistent spatial definition of urban regions and that their fragmentation is mainly influenced by national contexts. The developed methodology is a contribution to the debate on territorial reforms and urban governance transformations.
Local authorities are central actors in the governance of European intermediate urban regions. In this paper, we propose a methodology to analyse the fragmentation of local authorities within 119 urban regions. We tested several European databases to create indicators of fragmentation and to develop a typology of fragmentation within cities. Our results show that the Eurostat Cities programme gives a consistent spatial definition of urban regions and that their fragmentation is mainly influenced by national contexts. The developed methodology is a contribution to the debate on territorial reforms and urban governance transformations. ; Peer reviewed
La bonne gouvernance est un concept construit et équivoque, qui renvoie aux paradigmes sociétaux et transcrit en l'espèce plusieurs tendances contradictoires. Dans le champ des études urbaines, il est exploité politiquement pour infléchir des tendances et imprimer une réorganisation des acteurs. Cette communication examine deux questions centrales : comment les villes intègrent-elles le concept de bonne gouvernance et quels en sont les impacts ; comment le concept peut-il être exploité par les chercheurs en sciences urbaines.
Actes du colloque "Comment être acteur du développement de sa région ? : Un colloque international sur le thème de l'intelligence territoriale " (1) Nouvelle culture du développement (2) Outils et méthodes pour l'observation territoriale (3) Pistes d'actions concrètes pour tout territoire (4) Une appropriation indispensable par les acteurs ; Actes du colloque "Comment être acteur du développement de sa région ? : Une démarche d'Intelligence Territoriale"
