Governing beyond the metropolis: Placing the rural in city-region development

Abstract

Despite a select group of urban centres generating a disproportionate amount of global economic output, significant attention is being devoted to the impact of urban-economic processes on interstitial spaces lying between metropolitan areas. Nevertheless, there remains a noticeable silence in city-region debate concerning how rural spaces are conceptualised, governed and represented. In this paper we draw on recent city-region developments in England and Wales to suggest a paralysis of city-region policymaking has ensued from policy elites constantly swaying between a spatially-selective, city-first, agglomeration perspective on city-regionalism and a spatially-inclusive, region-first, scalar approach which fragments and divides territorial space along historical lines. In the final part we provide a typology of functionally dominant city-region constructs which we suggest offers a way out from the paralysis that currently grips city-region policymaking.

Localising urbanisation trajectories: comparing the emergence of second-tier urban regions in Europe (1890–2011)

“…These insights question the generic models that often underpin research on urbanisation and address the recent concerns of Brenner (2014) or Harrison and Heley (2015) about the city-centric bias of city-regional research and policy. As the role of places outside core cities in the development of current configurations is recognised, coreperiphery and spatially selective perspectives are replaced by the consideration of the full scale of the urban.…”

“…This has clear implications for policy and spatial planning, which many scholars have stressed (Lambregts 2006;Burger et al 2011;Harrison and Heley 2015). Notably, centrifugal and hierarchic forms of expansion from dominant core cities onto hinterlands with little history of prior urbanisation are likely to produce different functional and socio-economic arrangements, as well as political and cultural relations, than a mix of fragmented growth processes, emanating from a main core and other centres, with greater local divergences and coexisting contradictory trends.…”

Governing Beyond Cities: The Urban-Rural Interface

“…The call to govern beyond the metropolis (Harrison and Heley 2014 ) and connect to rural regions (Seitzener et al 2012) is based, fi rst, on the urban metabolism concept that focuses on material fl ows, notably nutrient, water, energy and waste (see Fig. 5.5 ) (Ravetz 2000 ;UNEP 2013 ;Hajer 2014 ;Villarroel Walker et al 2014 ).…”

“…Thinking about how to include and operationalize the distant rural in (peri-) urban governance is still in its infancy (Harrison and Heley 2014 ). One attempt is the delineation of 906 rural-urban regions (RURs) covering Europe, based on functional economic relationships between urban core areas, peri-urban zones, and their rural hinterlands (Zasada et al 2013 ).…”

Geographies of Urban Governance

“…Thinking about how to include and operationalize the distant rural in (peri-) urban governance is still in its infancy (Harrison and Heley 2014 ). One attempt is the delineation of 906 rural-urban regions (RURs) covering Europe, based on functional economic relationships between urban core areas, peri-urban zones, and their rural hinterlands (Zasada et al 2013 ).…”