Civic Capital and the Dynamics of Intermunicipal Cooperation for Regional Economic Development
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CIVIC CAPITAL AND THE DYNAMICS OF INTERMUNICIPAL COOPERATION FOR REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT By Jennifer Nelles A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto © Copyright by Jennifer Nelles (2009) CIVIC CAPITAL AND THE DYNAMICS OF INTERMUNICIPAL COOPERATION FOR REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PhD Thesis, 2009 Jennifer Nelles Department of Political Science University of Toronto Abstract: This thesis concentrates on the interplay of structural and societal factors in the development of regional governance though a comparative study of two Canadian (Toronto and Waterloo) and two German (Frankfurt and the Rhein-Neckar) city regions. It was inspired by the tendency, in both scholarship and practice, to turn to formal institutional reform to solve problems of regional coordination. Debates of new regionalism advocate a role for governance solutions, which encourage a broader spectrum of actors to engage in the policy process. However, the emphasis in most jurisdictions has remained on formal, institutionalized structures, imposed by senior levels of government. As a result, the construction and potential for bottom-up and collectively negotiated regional solutions are typically under-explored. This thesis builds a case for intermunicipal cooperation as an alternative approach to regional coordination, uniting the participatory concept of regional governance with functional flexibility of cooperative networks. It analyses what factors affect the emergence of these networks for governance in three areas of regional economic development: regional marketing, cultural policy and regional transportation. It argues that while regional structural, institutional and contextual variables are useful in ii understanding the emergence of development partnerships, they tend to have different effects in different cases. The thesis formulates and applies an innovative concept – civic capital – to capture the dynamics of building and sustaining regional governance networks. It is both a critique and extension of social capital approaches to regional development. Using the four cases the thesis argues that, where civic capital is high intermunicipal cooperation is more likely regardless of institutional and structural contexts. Consequently, the thesis makes a theoretical contribution to both literature on intermunicipal cooperation and broader debates on the dynamics of regional governance, development and social networks. iii Table of Contents Abstract.............................................................................................2 List of Tables.....................................................................................5 List of Figures...................................................................................5 List of Appendices............................................................................5 1. Cooperating for Regional Economic Development..........................1 2. Intermunicipal Cooperation in Theory............................................28 3. Towards a Theoretical Framework.................................................65 4. Frankfurt Rhein-Main: A Region in Search of an Identity...........102 5. Rhein-Neckar: A Region Built from Below..................................147 6. Toronto: Strong City, Weak Region..............................................194 7. Waterloo: Forging a Culture of Cooperation.................................240 8. Conclusion: The Best of Two Worlds...........................................287 References......................................................................................314 Appendix........................................................................................333 iv List of Tables Table 2.1: Intermunicipal cooperation literature............. 30 [Appendix A (333)] Table 2.2: Types of transaction costs...................................................35 Table 3.1: Summary of hypotheses......................................................66 Table 3.2: Typology of intermunicipal cooperation intensity..............76 Table 3.3: Independent variables and expected effects.......................83 Table 3.4: Distribution of interviews conducted................................96 Table 4.1: Municipal tax revenues in Hessen.....................................125 Table 5.1: Municipal tax revenues in Baden-Wurttemberg................171 Table 6.1: Governing boards of Tier 1 organizations..........................235 Table 7.1: Board leadership in the Waterloo region............................278 Table 8.1: Matrix of civic capital vs. cooperative intensity.................289 Table 8.2: Summary of cooperative intensities....................................291 List of Figures Figure 1.1: Alternative conceptions of regional governance..................12 Figure 1.2: Fragmentation vs. Institutionalization..................................12 Figure 4.1: Map of the Rhein-Main region...........................................103 Figure 4.2: Activities of Landrat Banzer..............................................139 Figure 5.1: Organization of governance in the Rhein-Neckar region...152 List of Appendices Appendix A: Table 2.1 Intermunicipal Cooperation Literature........... 333 Appendix B: Interview Guide............................................................... 335 v 1 Chapter 1: Cooperating for Regional Economic Development Lines, Lines, Everywhere Lines What is a city? The answers are at once obvious and ephemeral. A city is a community of individuals linked by a common location in time and space. But as a distinct mode of human group life does it presuppose a common identity? Is it a physical environment, or a social construct? Mumford argues that a city is a theatre for social action, a stage that “intensifies and underlines the gesture of the actors and the action of the play” (1937). For the Chicago school, cities are organic constructions – they are the natural habitat of civilized man (Park, 1925). A city a is set of shared experiences, as Simmel (1903) would have it, a state of mind, an impression filtered through prisms of subjective space, the outside world, and social life. It is a conceptual location (Donald, 1999). For Haussmann and Le Corbusier, it was an ideal to be realized, a vision of both built form and social organization. It could be a utopian island – glittering, ordered, and efficient. For others the city represents a blighted environment and decaying society. It is an arena where broader patterns are reproduced and mediated, social and industrial structures are shaped, and the opportunities and inequalities of capitalism play out. It is also a political space in which these forces are contested. A city, it appears, can be many things – depending on your perspective. A political science perspective on the city can incorporate all of the above dimensions – sociological, economic, functional, structural, imagined, ecological – in an approach to governance and governing. But cities are commonly conceptualized as political places, defined by functional jurisdictions.1 A critical question for this perspective is then not about what constitutes a city, but where the territorially bounded political jurisdiction starts and where it ends. Are a city’s boundaries located where the 1 A functional urban region is typically defined in terms of an urbanized core plus the surrounding suburban (and sometimes rural) territories with significant orientations towards this centre. While there are variety of ways to measure the functional region – including economic, education and labour market ties – it is most frequently defined by travel-to-work, or commuter, patterns. See Frey and Alden (1992) and Frey and Zimmer (2001) for a general discussion of defining functional urban regions. See also individual national statistical agencies for variations on these principles and their practical approaches to defining urban regions on functional grounds. For the purposes of this dissertation the specific boundaries of functional regions are not debated in detail but the concept is used mainly to illustrate that functional spaces transcend and cross formal administrative boundaries, creating a context which may necessitate intermunicipal coordination. 2 pavement ends and where some other entity, the “country”, begins – at some minimum density, where zoning laws change? Where exactly is that? In practical fact, the boundaries of a city are easy to discern. Cities are circumscribed by lines on a map. This study is inspired by these very lines. While defining government jurisdictions with seemingly arbitrary lines is practically necessary, it is technically problematic. While these lines are relatively static, cities are in a constant state of flux. Like an ecology, the character of a city, its problems, its neighbourhoods, its size (both in terms of population and physical size), and the actors on the stage, can change from minute to minute, while even more radical changes take place over time. Development and sprawl render the physical boundaries of a city indistinct. As a result what is urban can spill over its frontiers into the rural. Often rural governments are ill equipped to deal with growing urban problems. However, sprawl from urban to rural is only the most observable manifestation of urban externalities. While there are many different ways of defining city-regions (see particularly Parr, 2005 and Davoudi, 2008 for a critical