Multilevel Urban Governance and the 'European City'

Urban scholars have come up with very different answers to the question of what the main defining characteristics of urban Europe are and whether they can be described in a distinct ideal-typical model, the 'European City'. In order to fully understand the prevailing political arrangements and ongoing transformations in urban Europe, they have increasingly turned towards 'multilevel governance approaches' to conduct more comprehensive and comparative analyses of urban politics and policies. Nico Giersig reflects on these debates and exemplifies the specificities of Nordic cities within Europe as a whole. He accomplishes this by means of a systematic comparison of governance arrangements and their dynamics in two Nordic capital regions.

Autorentext
Dr. Nico Giersig promovierte bei Prof. Dr. Hartmut Häußermann am Institut für Sozialwissenschaften der Humboldt-Universität, Berlin. Er ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Lehrstuhl Soziologie und Sozialgeschichte der Stadt an der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

Inhalt
Multilevel Urban Governance: Origin, Core Issues, Current Debates.- Theories of Urban Politics and Policies in a Changing Context.- From Urban Government to Multilevel Urban Governance.- Integrated Multilevel Urban Governance Analysis: Comparing Neostructuralist and Neo-Weberian Approaches.- Metropolitan Governance Reforms in Stockholm and Helsinki: An Indicator for Governance Transformations in Sweden and Finland.- Explaining the rationale of the research focus.- The Nordic Countries: A Comprehensive Political and Societal Model.- The Helsinki and Stockholm Regions in Context: Structural Characteristics, Recent Trends and New Challenges.- Metropolitan Cooperation, Integration and Conflict: Comparing Modes of Governance in the Finnish and Swedish Capital Regions.- Concluding Assessments.