Zarządzanie obszarami metropolitalnymi na przykładzie francuskich rozwiązań instytucjonalnych - między inercją a zmianą

Abstract

The metropolisation phenomenon is one of the globalisation's result that transform urban areas and their social relations. In the process of globalisation some of the largest metropolitan areas become a plot where global nets cross, concentrating decision making, capital, and innovation that propel the global economic system. Intensification of flows and multiplication of interactive systems in some urban areas is one outcome of metropolisation. New interactive systems appear in yet unknown spatial configurations connecting the most remote placed on the Earth. Those systems also create new schemes in objective and subjective dimension linking actors functioning so far at a great distance in the spheres that were not subjected to exchange. The multiplication of interactive systems in the metropolitan area produces both positive and negative results of the metropolisation. According to Raymond Boudon's conception of action's systems, the positive consequences of the metropolisation might be referred to as functional interactive systems where spatial coexistence of actors leads to information exchange, learning processes, and cooperation. The metropolisation has, however, also its negative side effects having the Boudon's system of interdependence. These are different kinds of unintended and dysfunctional aggregation effects of individual's activities that cause specific ecological, financial, and political. Suburbanisation and cities shrinking as well as waste management, public transport and social pathology can be mentioned. The awareness of dualism of the metropolisation consequences and the will to limit its side effects lead to a search for proper institutional solutions. These institutions form metropolitan area management structures that are to transform coexistent interactive systems into functional systems, minimising at the same time the negative consequences of the metropolisation. France is a state where these kind of institutional structures take the form of public units of inter-communal cooperation (EPCI). Although there are many drawbacks concerning its territorial inadequacy to functional metropolitan areas, they play an important role in its management fostering its development. The territorial reform prepared in 2010 in France was to create another generation of such an institutional structure leading to the empowerment of metropolitan area providing its sustainable development. Many factors made the reform much less ambitious than its initial projects.