Metropolitan governance of European medium-size cities. Linking cities trajectories and mode of governance.

In the past few years, an increased attention has been paid to the effect of governance on regional development and trajectories. It is commonly argued by scholars and practitioners that governance is a key factor of regional competitiveness and differentiation. In this context, some institutions as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations (UN) or the European Commission (EC) claim that a better governance (or actually “good governance”) leads to better places to live, enhanced competitiveness and less segregation. In the same time, research, public efforts and investments has been focused on metropolitan regions as lever for economic development.
If there is a consensus on the role of governance on metropolitan and urban development, researches mainly focused on cases analysis and bigger metropolis regions. Few empirical studies tried to link metropolitan governance and metropolitan trajectories in European Union, particularly for medium-size cities and metropolitan area (100.000 - 1.000.000 inhabitants), which represents a significant proportion of the European population and economy. Nowadays, some exploratory researches based on the Urban Audit (European Commission) and complementary surveys give us additional information on governance of such cities.
In our research, we aimed to explore the link between metropolitan governance of medium-sized cities and their trajectories. We used latest data from the European Commission (Urban Audit, Perception survey, Regional Statistic Database - Eurostat) and additional sources for socio-economic, environmental and governance indicators (especially metropolitan governance typology). We integrated in our work previous researches on this topic.
Our exploratory research pointed out pattern and similarities in European medium-sized cities governance and trajectories. Despite some difficulties to distinguish governance effects to other determinants of well-being and competitiveness, it opens questions on “governance matters” leitmotiv, public policy adequacy and innovation capacity in European cities.