Draft
Metropolitan discourse in Poland and Germany – so far though so near?
Marta Lackowska
Research fellow at Department of Political Science, Darmstadt University of Technology and Assistant Professor at Department of Local Development and Policy, University of Warsaw
Paweł Swianiewicz
Professor at University of Warsaw, and Chair of the Department of Local Development and Policy.
Paper prepared for the Annual NISPACee Conference
Budva, 14-16 May 2009
1. Introduction
In Poland the debate on the appropriate steering structure for metropolitan areas is relatively new. First voices rising the question on metropolitan reform date back to the 1990’s (see: Mażewski 1997 proposal for Gdansk Metropolis reform, reforms of the status of Warsaw – see Lackowska 2009), but the enlivenment – or better to say: development – of the discussion has taken place only since circa 2003. In fact, taking into account that the self-governments in Poland were formed after 1989 (last administrative reform was carried out in the 1999), the metropolitan actors themselves are very young (interesting contribution here are the words of the former mayor of Wroclaw: “in the early 1990’s the small rural suburban municipalities were either equal partners for the core cities, nor were they eager to cooperate – they would rather enjoy their freshly gained autonomy”). Moreover, currently there is no specific form of regulation related to governing metropolitan areas in Poland. There is also no official definition of metropolitan areas, although the Law on Spatial Planning obliges regional government to prepare special plans for metropolitan areas. The only example of specific legal regulation for big cities is the Law on Warsaw Local Government (which has undergone a couple of very significant changes during last 15 years), but it is dealing with organization of government within central city limits only, not touching the relationship with surrounding suburb areas, and therefore will not be discussed in this paper. As a result Polish metropolitan discussion and practise have hardly any tradition to lean on. The first organization which brought the issue of metropolitan governance to the public debate have been Union of Polish Metropolises (Unia Metropolii Polskich – referred later as UMP, established in 1990). Although the Union’s members are 12 core cities of the largest Polish agglomerations, the organization has tried to identify and recognize wider “metropolitan areas”, which boundaries have been defined in a very controversial way (covering very wide area and including municipalities with very weak ties with the central city)[1]. The debate was triggered to a far extend by the accession to the EU and the perspectives for access to the European financial assistance (Swianiewicz and Lackowska 2007). Another factor was the elaboration of the new version of the national planning documents (KPZK – The Concept of Spatial Management of the Country), which would distinguish the metropolitan areas as well as passing the law on the planning obligation for those areas. But until 2007 these debates were relatively weak and not concluded in the official governmental proposal of the new legislation[2]. Metropolitan-wide problems were dealt with either through annexation of suburb villages by growing central cities, or through – usually ineffective – voluntary co-operation of municipal and county level governments (Lackowska 2008). The situation has changed in early 2008 when government announced the draft law on “Development of Cities and Metropolitan Areas”.
At the same time, the German metropolitan debate has a much longer tradition. Already between 1912 and 1937 a reform wave overwhelmed biggest German cities. In Berlin and Hamburg the reforms went in the direction of the city boundaries adjustment, so that the truly bounded formal and real catchment areas would be achieved. In Ruhr Region on the other hand, the more cooperative structure was established – Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlbezierk (see: Freund 2003: 130).
Metropolitan cooperation (above all in the field of spatial planning) and search for the best institutional solution flourished throughout the whole XX century and resulted in establishment of very different institutional settings in German metropolises (the last restructuring wave has taken place after 2000). Also the metropolitan discourse itself has much longer tradition than in Poland. The focus of the debate seems to be automatically put to the city regions (resulting in multiple publications on metropolitan issues (such as Ludwig et al. 2008, Heinelt and Kubler 2005, Esser and Schamp 2001); the elaborations on the politics of the mere core cities are hard to find.
In the slowly developing Polish discourse on metropolitan governance, the traditions of German metropolitan organization have been an important point of reference. German examples, especially those of the cities of Stuttgart and Hannover have been often quoted in the debates, as positive examples or even models to be followed[3]. But interestingly enough, the Polish discourse was not a simple replication of arguments presented in Germany before. Only some dimensions of German metropolitan debate and the reform implementation have been incorporated into the Polish expert and public discourse, while some other areas remained underestimated or simply ignored as not relevant. The following sections of this paper present (one by one) the most significant of these differences. We focus on those aspects of debates which differ in both countries and speculate on the reasons for those differences.
2. Main lines of the international metropolitan debate
The international (mainly Western European and American) discourse on metropolitan governance has since the 1990’s been strongly dominated by the new regionalism paradigm. The main feature distincting it from the previous debates is the focus on economic premises. In the realm of globalisation, metropolitan areas are forced to compete for various resources on the international scene. Attracting investors and young talented employees poses a challenge both for local authorities and for business sector already operating in a region. One of the points strengthening such attitude has been the EU declaration considering metropolitan areas as the growth engines stimulating the innovative development of much further space. The EU debate puts an emphasis on such a restructuring of city regions which would assure their high competitive capacities (Brenner and Heeg 1998). The main focus is to minimize the discrepancy between the economic and political boundaries (ibidem: 661). Nonetheless, the failures of metropolitan reform and constraints of voluntary cooperation have resulted in governance putting less emphasis on structural frames. Competitiveness and equity can be achieved by the means of informal cooperative networks possibly (but not inevitably) accompanied by governmental structures. In their efforts to reach the metropolitan-wide equity new regionalists foster the fiscal equalisation schemes covering a core and its suburban parts (Savich and Vogel 2009: 113). Openness of the governing network for non-public actors underlines the economic undertone of governance approach. On the one hand the engagement of big business assures more resources available for the metropolis, on the other hand it raises questions on democratic legitimacy. Next to the pessimistic scenario (Kübler and Schwab 2007), the argumentation on drawbacks of the economic driven policies is being developed. Some academics wonder whether the project oriented governance style dominated by economic perspective is the best for the region as a social concept (Lefévre 1998). Short term projects initiated by economic actors may not necessary correspond with the wide public interest. The logic of jurisdictions (which constituting element is territory) remains very different from the economic driven logic of the space of flows. And a public oriented policy (service delivery, local democracy functioning, development of the whole unit not of a certain company) is the element that should not be eliminated from the governance networks. After all these networks still involve public affairs!
Recently, next to “governance” concept, the rescaling (or “reterritorialisation”) gains on popularity, offering new analytical and theoretical frames for metropolitan governance. In the new approach even more attention is being put to the international competitiveness of city regions, which have become a crucial nodes in the global structures, and as such involve even more levels of interactions. Escaping the logic of single jurisdiction starts to be accompanied by the broader phenomenon of rescaling the national politics – more and more influence is being gained by the regional and local levels (Keating 2001). Faced with the new challenges metropolitan politics have to undergo restructuring of their managerial frameworks. The approach though is criticised for not providing sufficient normative guidance on how this regional structures should be arranged (Savich and Vogel 2009).
In light of this briefly outlined discourse, the main question of the article becomes clear: to what extend the mentioned distinctive aspects of the new paradigm are present in Polish and German debate? Answering the question we confront the two debates with the general lines of the international metropolitan discussion and at the same time point out the differences between the two national discourses. Especially interesting is the extent to which the Polish debate adopts the international trends. Are there any Polish specific features of the debate or is it rather reflecting the foreign ones?
3. Metropolitan government institutions in Poland and Germany
It is not the aim of this paper to present a comprehensive set of information on institutional setting of governing metropolitan areas in both countries. Such an information may be found in earlier publications[4]. Here, we limit ourselves to reminding very basic facts only.
In Germany metropolitan areas stay within the competence of the respective federal authorities, which results in a significant variation of the forms of metropolitan arrangements as well as of their legal frameworks. As was already mentioned the (very different) reforms of the institutional setting were carried out throughout the XX century, writing the long German metropolitan history. The first reform wave in the 20’s and 30’s resulted in creation of the consolidated Great Berlin in1920 (GrossBerlin) and Great Hamburg in 1937 (GrossHamburg). Since 1936 the planning communities were being established as a top-down forms of metropolitan cohesion. In parallel, already since 1920’s, the single-purpose associations in the urban areas flourished (Bletter 2005), creating a very solid basis for the tradition of the German metropolitan cooperation. After the World War II the new federal division of Germany triggered the debate on adjusting the federal boundaries, so as to establish federal states bigger and stronger in economic and financial terms (Brenner and Heeg 1998). One of the elements in the debate was also the reshaping of the administrative configuration around the biggest cities (ibidem), in order to minimize the cases of metropolitan areas being split into 2-3 federal states. The main argumentative line was equalisation of the socio-economic disparities between the core and the suburbs. This had to do with the rapid development of the urban areas after the II World War, which forced reforms adjusting their structures to the new reality. Only then, between 50’s and 70‘s the problems related to every-day infrastructure were solved. As Blatter (2002: 131) describes, at first associations responsible for water management were established and in 70’s public transport and waste treatment were effectively dealt with. It has to be stressed though that the main tool for reaching metropolitan-wide coordination and cooperation were at that time planning associations (ibidem: 132). At the end of the 70’s and beginning of the 80’s due to the reconfiguration in the political configuration both on the federal and local level, the metropolitan structures were somehow left much lower on the agenda, resulting in some steps backwards in the already developed institutional setting[5]. The enlivenment of the metropolitan debate took place in the 90’s and was connected to the regional policy of the EU. The main focus of the debate has been shifted towards the international competitiveness and territorial marketing. These tasks have no longer been seen as the national competences, rather as the challenges facing federal and metropolitan level (Brenner and Heeg 1998; Blotevogel as Schmitt 2006). Metropolitan areas have started to be considered as the growth engines. The governance premises marked their influence in the creation of many various metropolitan structures in the urban regions.
An example of a traditional, hierarchical metropolitan reform is the case of Hanover. In 2001 the purpose association Zweckverband Großraum Hannover gathering the city of Hanover and the surrounding county was abolished as well as the county itself and the Region Hannover established. The new organisation has wide competences in spatial planning, waste water treatment, fostering economic development, public transport, social assistance, waste management, environmental protection management, coordination of hospitals and vocational schools (see: Gesetz über die Region….2001). An important element is a direct democratic legitimation: president and regional assembly (Regionversammlung) are directly elected.
Less “hard”, but also fairly formal is the organisation of Stuttgart region, where in 1994 the Association Region Stuttgart (Verband Region Stuttgart) was created. Here, the establishment of the association was not accompanied by abolition of the existing jurisdictions (association gathers five counties and city of Stuttgart), nonetheless the association has a directly elected organ – regional assembly (Regionversammlung) and relatively wide competences (spatial planning, water management, public transport, supporting economic development).
Direct democratic legitimation is not an inseparable element of all the German metropolitan arrangements. Most of them lack it; in fact and the metropolitan gatherings are composed of the representatives of the member-jurisdictions. This is for instance the case of the Ruhr Region, where the Regional Association Ruhr (Regionalverband Ruhr) operates. Its present legal shape was acknowledged by the federal law of 2004, but the preceding organisation dates back to the 1920 and as such is the oldest (and biggest) German municipal association (Petzinger et al. 2008: 143). The association organises its works by the means of the joint projects in various policy fields (eg. planning, economic development, sport and culture).
An example of yet softer, voluntary structure is the one of Frankfurt. At the end of 2001 the federal authorities introduced the law, which acknowledges the voluntary cooperation as the best solution to reach cohesion in the polycentric region. The law does not provide the fixed patterns for cooperation forms in most of the policies. The only domain with the firm regulations is planning, for which Planning Association (criticised for its narrow delimitation) was established. Another organisation created by the law is Regional Council (Rat der Region). It is supposed to coordinate and stimulate the cooperation within the region, but in practice it fails to do so due to its advisory character (no compelling capacities) and rare, gossip-like meetings (Bördlein 2000: 543). Under this legal framework the plenitude of various (often overlapping and competing with each other) initiatives has been flourishing. Important group among those are the business actors of the region. All in all the regional status quo is being criticised for the lack of direct legitimacy and a general ineffectiveness in solving common regional problems.