Patterns of continuity and change in the planning and governance of emblematic metropolitan regions

The planning and governance of metropolitan regions has attracted wide academic interest over the past two decades. Studies include seminal accounts that situate metropolitan regions within the contours of globalisation dynamics and neoliberalism (e.g., Brenner 2004; Storper 2013), through to more systematic approaches that compare shifting metropolitan policies and governance arrangements across different national contexts (e.g., Salet et al. 2003; Zimmermann & Getimis 2017), and more recent perspectives that analyse key drivers and features of metropolitan change through the logics of periodisation and phronesis (Galland & Harrison 2020).

While rooted in widely diverse methodologies, these approaches to the question of metropolitan planning and governance pursue the common goal of understanding metropolitan change through distinctive processes by which it respectively unfolds and compares within and across well-defined time periods. However, much less scholarly attention has been devoted to the analysis of processes of continuity in attempting to understand how metropolitan planning and governance evolves. In developing a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the factors shaping metropolitan governance and development over time, this paper takes on a historical institutionalist approach to examine how combined patterns of continuity and change play out across an extended time frame of several decades.

Inspired by Sorensen’s (2015) historical institutionalist research agenda, the paper outlines a framework for analysing the evolution of metropolitan planning institutions through (i) critical junctures and developmental pathways of institutional development (Capoccia & Kelemen 2007); (ii) patterns of path dependence and positive feedback effects (Pierson 2000); and (iii) patterns and processes of gradual incremental institutional change (Mahoney & Thelen 2010). Focusing on long-term changes in emblematic metropolitan regions in Denmark and the Netherlands, the paper develops an historical account of institutionalised processes of continuity and change. More specifically, the paper considers (i) the timing and sequencing of key institutional developments; (ii) the patterns of institutional embeddedness and the degree of path dependence of metropolitan institutions; and (iii) the linkages between different scales of governance in determining patterns of metropolitan institutional design. The paper concludes by discussing the degree of leverage of the proposed institutionalist framework to the study of metropolitan planning history whilst reflecting on implications for international comparative planning research.