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examples of it. Admittedly, in some countries efforts have recently been made to
stimulate the creation of metropolitan administrative bodies. The legal foundations for it
have already been provided in Italy (for the ten largest metropolises) and Portugal (for
Lisbon and Oporto). In Italy the discussions are for the moment confined to three cities,
nor has much concrete progress been made in Portugal. In the Netherlands plans are in the
making to form ’city provinces’ (with regional as well as local tasks) for the largest urban
regions, but the process has been delayed by the lack of societal support in the cities of
Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In Spain (Barcelona and Valencia) and Germany (Ruhr area,
Frankfurt, Hanover, Mittlerer Neckar and Berlin/Brandenburg) voluntary public-public
partnerships have been concluded, but with rather narrow task loads and responsibilities.
In some cities the functional metropolitan region coincides more or less with a regional
administrative unit, which presumably should favour internal adjustment (among others
in Madrid, Bilbao, Stockholm, Vienna, Brussels, Hamburg and Bremen). For the Brussels
region that is no more than theory since the competency for cultural policies is lacking.
With the exception of France and Finland, nowhere in Europe are there (as yet)
metropolitan authorities. Nevertheless the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain and the United
Kingdom have experimented with such forms of administration. These metropolitan
authorities were all abolished, however, in the 1980s for various reasons (political
arguments, lack of success). The Labour government has recently decided to reintroduce
an authority on the level of the former Greater London Region. This Greater London
Authority will have considerably more power than its predecessor. France is an exception
with its ten Urban Communities. These regional administrative bodies exist in fact
alongside the communities and have assumed a significant portion of the metropolitan
tasks without encroaching upon the formal autonomy of the communes. Founded in the
1960s -and not abolished as elsewhere- that formula now seems to be successful (in Lille
and Lyon, for instance). However, not every city can take advantage of this situation (like
f.i. Marseilles). In Finland the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council (a legal organ) is in
operation, with in fact a rather narrow task load. In most other countries the gap in supra-
municipal administration is filled by (obligatory or voluntary) co-operation, for instance
for the purpose of joint exploitation of public services, or under the stimulation of the
policy of the European Union, which is primarily addressed to the regions.
2.4 Urban issues and challenges in national perspectives
The general conclusion of the present investigation may be that in more and more
member states attention is given to the position and the role of the towns in regional and
national development. Of course, the measure of attention is bound up with the degree of
urbanisation and the administrative structure. In federal Germany and in Belgium many
competencies with respect to urban development are vested in the Lander (Germany) or
the regions (Belgium), so that the national government looks at the towns from a distance.
In the other countries of advancing and advanced urbanisation, the importance of a
growing number of urban concerns and challenges has been recognised for some time on
the national level. And in some of the less urbanised countries the debate about the
position of towns in the national development has recently got underway. At first, the