Due to the national importance of metropolitan areas, central governments seek to make them as attractive and competitive as possible. In many cases, this is done through state control over metropolitan areas and their governance arrangements. This article examines the relationship between state...

This study identifies three types of legitimation from the literature that can be applied within metropolitan governance in the contested sphere of spatial planning: input legitimation, throughput legitimation, and output legitimation. The reason for discussing different forms of legitimation...

1. The new metropolis : rethinking megalopolis / Robert Lang and Paul K. Knox -- 2. Looking backward, looking forward : the city region of the mid-21st century / Peter Hall -- 3. The 21st-century metropolis : new geographies of theory / Ananya Roy -- 4. City regions and place development / Patsy...

1. Setting the stage -- 2. An action framework for rural municipalities -- 3. An agenda for cross-border know-how exchange -- 4. The evaluation of the transferability of the proposed agenda -- 5. Conclusion.

"The Randstad metropolitan region encompassing Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht in the western Netherlands is regarded worldwide as a model of a 'successful' polycentric metropolis. It is widely cited as an example of how a region of interconnected small cities can effectively compete...