La spatialité de la gouvernance des régions urbaines intermédiaires en Europe

The governance of urban regions is a central research topic of urban sciences, and a major challenge for urban actors. In this research, we contribute to the analysis of governance processes by studying the transformation of its spatiality in intermediate European urban regions. Our research postulates the intrinsically spatial nature of urban governance, and is based on three hypotheses: (1) the territorial characteristics of urban regions relate to local politico-administrative fragmentation, (2) the characteristics of politico-administrative fragmentation relate to the construction of a governance scale for urban regions, and (3) governance structures at the level of urban regions relate to territorial characteristics. In order to test these hypotheses, we conducted a research in three complementary parts. The first part is devolted to the state of the art on governance, territorial rescaling and institutional change. The second part analyses quantitatively the politico-administrative fragmentation of 123 intermediate European urban regions, and its links with territorial indicators. The third part analyses qualitatively the processes of transformation of spatial governance in the urban regions of Saint-Étienne (France), Metz (France), Sheffield (United Kingdom) and Liège (Belgium). This complementary research confirms the existence of links between the different aspects of spatiality in the governance of intermediate urban regions in Europe, and concludes that the recomposition processes are intrinsically spatial, territorial and multiscalar.