Cities as Political Objects

Edited by Alistair Cole, Professor of Political Science and Renaud Payre, Professor of Political Science, Sciences Po Lyon, France

• Contents: 1. Cities as Political Objects Alistair Cole and Renaud Payre PART I CAPITAL CITY DYNAMICS2. Functional Integration, Political Conflict and Muddled Metropolitanism in the London Region: 1850-2016Ian Gordon 3. The Greater Paris Debate: The French State and its Capital regionPauline Prat 4. A Tale of Two Cities: Madrid and Barcelona in SpainAndrew DowlingPART II CITIES AS POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE CATEGORIES5. The City as a Legal Category and legal archiveJacques Caillosse 6. The rise and demise of neighbourhood democracy: decentralising the urban polity in Rotterdam since 1940 Stefan Couperus 7. Cities in the Italian political system: incomplete actors and objects of policies Francesca Artioli 8. Cities in the Multi-level System of German FederalismHubert Heinelt and Karsten Zimmermann9. The Métropole as a Contested and Partisan Institution: Reflections on the Case of the French City of Nice.Stéphane Cadiou PART III CITY ACTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE10. Making Metropolis: Innovation and Local Governance issues in Paris and Milan Clement Pin and Déborah Galimberti 11. The Metropolis and the Market: Political Rescaling Through Public-private Bike-sharing Policy in Brussels Maxime Huré 12. Two Faces of the City: Varieties of metropolitanisation in Lyons and MarseillesChristophe Parnet 13. Assembling multi-level governance in regeneration: an international comparison between France and BritainJuliet Carpenter Index

'Cities are back as significant political-administrative units - only now as metropolises. Rather than simply a mechanical effect of the exigencies of economic globalization, this book convincingly demonstrates that an array of active political actors are involved in energizing the trend. It is political praxis not economic structure that provides the key to understanding the efflorescence of urban governance today. The fact that there is much variation across cities in the extent and effectiveness of new models of governance suggests how much one-size-fits-all economic determinism misses the point,'