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them and identifies with them” (Lefebvre, 1998). What remains crucial in this regard is the “recognition” of the metropolitan government’s authority by citizens, local authorities and “pressure groups” in the area. Lefebvre observes, however, that “existing local governments always have looked unfavorably upon the appearance of new autonomous and powerful political structures in a given territorial organization that would call into question the legitimacy and authority of the existing system” (1998). Lefebvre ends his remarks with a cautionary quote highlighting the importance of metropolitan government. He states that,
if the central cities agree to play the game, it is because they are now aware that they need the peripheries in order to develop, or quite simply to keep their place, in the ranks of world cities. The urban hierarchy of today is international. The globalization of the economy has once again meant that the economy and functional considerations are factors which make the introduction of metropolitan governments necessary, no longer to provide urban services, but infrastructures and facilities that a world metropolis, a European town, must have if it wishes to continue to play a major international role (1998). Lefebvre, in this statement recalls that it is precisely for the sake of economic competitiveness and continued development in a globally competitive market that collaborative metropolitan planning must be considered as essential in polycentric urban regions. Given the evolution of urban systems into polycentric urban regions, the re-emergence of metropolitan governments and governance systems is crucial for continued socioeconomic competitiveness in a globalized economy.
THESIS: NET WORK GOVERNANCE FOR URBAN REGIONS
3.4 LOCALIST INTERESTS AND THE REBUTTAL TO METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT The rise and construction of metropolitan governance networks and collaboration, though needed given the socio-spatial evolution of urban systems, has run aground on a number of socio-political debates. One of the most crucial obstacles standing in the way of the construction of more cohesive metropolitan governance networks, as discussed in the previous paragraph, is the resurgence of a more “localist” response to the question of urban service provision. As was mentioned by Lefebvre “center cities… are now aware that they need their peripheries in order to develop…and keep their place the world economy” (2002). That being said, the metropolitan scale of intervention and urban governance during the Fordist era, though functional in that epoch, lost legitimacy as it did not embody the institutional tools need int the Post-Fordist era. Under Fordist modes of accumulation and regulation, there was a constant redistribution of economic development across metropolitan areas, with interventions being implemented in ascribed and defined geographic areas. As economies and modes of accumulation have shifted, Post-Fordist regimes articulated the need to enhance and stimulate globally competitive place-making initiatives to attract capital and generate endogenous economic growth. With an evolution to a Post-Fordist capital regime and retrenchment of the Fordist welfare state, there is a friction of modes of regulation and modes of accumulation of two diverging regimes in juxtaposing spatial organizations. Localist planning is thus a response to the inequities and inefficiencies generated by past, authoritative and redistributive metropolitan planning institutions and an effort to cope with Fordist, Keynesian welfare state service retrenchment. Localist policy agendas in response to metropolitan government coordination have arisen for a number of reasons. Supporters of a localist agenda claim that the “incentive for participation is in immediate neighborhoods” is “strongest” and note that “informal contacts” between