Keywords

Introduction

Urban agglomerations and metropolitan areas are motors of growth in relation to production and services, labour markets, innovation and technology, and social and cultural life (OECD 2011). Big cities and their surroundings generate high standards of living and can transform their entire hinterland. The development of spatial relations between a city and its surroundings fosters more intensive administrative cooperation among municipal units, including the development of institutional forms of governance. Metropolitan integration is increasingly vital for socioeconomic growth, particularly in the face of growing international competition. Local cooperation can generate economies of scale and agglomeration. More important, it can help to create a critical mass by linking together disparate units of government in a metropolitan region. For example, in the case of Upper Silesia, no one city has more than 310,000 people, but together the region has almost three million city dwellers. Similarly, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer has argued that cities in the north of England are ‘individually strong but collectively not strong’ and called for the creation of a ‘supercity’ in the north of England, made up of four midsized cities: Manchester, Sheffield, Bradford, and Leeds which together have a population of nine million, greater than London (Groom 2014). In the face of competition, local cooperation can foster more effective management, the coordination of spatial planning, and more effective provision of services, raising the quality of life throughout a metropolitan region. Increasingly, when looking at metropolitan areas, policymakers think in terms of critical mass. They argue that too many local governments can result in fragmented policy formation and obscure regional strengths (see, e.g. OECD 2012, pp. 20–21, 290–99).

The adaptability of metropolitan management to changing socioeconomic conditions is essential to ensure that cities and metropolitan areas remain competitive and foster innovation. The creation of new and more effective methods of metropolitan area management, either through new metropolitan governments or other metropolitan-wide institutions, is a common response to local changes caused by suburbanisation and to global changes caused by changing technology, manufacturing, and business practices.

Metropolitan Integration in a Polish Context

Until 1989, local governments in Poland were little more than state enterprises. They were responsible for providing and managing housing and public transport for their inhabitants, for preparing land for construction, and for managing local building programmes to meet the needs of industrial development. They had no taxation powers and relied on the central government for all their funding. They were under no compulsion to make a profit on the enterprises they managed and laboured under a perpetual shortage of resources (Ryder 1990). After the collapse of communism in 1989, local governments gained autonomy and broader powers over their own affairs. They gained limited financial autonomy and tools to manage their own budgets. Local administration reform reinstated local governments in cities and communes in 1990, giving local governments political and moral legitimacy. Consequently, they became more vocal in protecting their administrative and fiscal rights. Today, Poland has 2,479 local governments. 1,576 are rural communes, and 1,585 have populations less than 10,000 (Główny Urząd Statystyczny 2012).

In the early 1990s, Polish politicians, social scientists, economists, and political scientists began to discuss how to reorganise the administrative structure of the country, in existence since 1975. The result was the most comprehensive administrative reorganisation in central-eastern Europe, exceeding even that in the former German Democratic Republic. After several years, it was decided to replace 49 administrative regions – województwo (voivodeships) – with just 16 larger ones. These came into being at the start of 1999. The reform established two other levels of government: the powiat (secondary local government units, similar to German kreis) and the gmina (commune). The voivodeships are part of the central government administration. The two lower levels, the powiats and the gmina, are relatively autonomous. This ‘new’ administrative system was a return to a three-level system which existed until 1939.

The pre-1999 voivodeships were usually focused on one large city or town. Some had encompassed entire metropolitan areas. This was particularly true of voivodeships which surrounded the country’s largest cities – themselves voivodeships – including Kraków, Poznań, Wrocław, Warsaw, Łódż, and the Gdańsk-Gdynia conurbation The post-1999 voivodeships embraced more than just a large city and its hinterland. In contrast to the previous administrative system, the largest city did not always dominate the economic and political life of the voivodeship. The decision on where to draw the boundaries of the new regions involved extensive consultation. Residents in areas which bordered two regions were consulted on which region they wished to adhere to.

The creation of larger voivodeships and powiats complicated the administrative system and the management of metropolitan regions. Increased local government powers added to this complexity. Cities were recognised as distinct units, but no effort was made to create administrative structures which embraced metropolitan regions. By the early 2000s, it was evident that metropolitan areas were rapidly growing in size and population even though many core cities were losing population (OECD 2011, p. 42; Mikuła 2013, slides 5–6). Thanks to a post-communist explosion of car ownership and growing suburbanisation, more and more local governments were drawn into metropolitan orbits. In 1990 there were only 5,261,000 registered passenger cars in Poland. By 1999 the number had reached 9,282,800, and in 2012 it reached over 18,744,000 (Eurostat 2012, p. 84). A first attempt at metropolitan management, the Spatial Planning and Spatial Management Act of 27 March 2003 (Ustawa o planowaniu i zagospodarowaniu przestrzennym z dnia 27 marca 2003 roku) (Dziennik Ustaw 2003), was taken in 2003, with the passage of an act requiring metropolitan planning. However, this was restricted to physical planning and did not include the delivery of services and other functions. Subsequently, the Polish government attempted to create metropolitan area councils to deal with region-wide issues, to improve service delivery, and to reduce costs. Unfortunately, efforts to claw back local government powers and reallocate them to metropolitan area governments failed due to strong resistance among local governments and their residents.

This paper describes some of the proposals first made by the Polish government to foster metropolitan governance. National government proposals were first made in 2008–2009, but, as of 2014, were still not implemented. Proposals for changes came from two sources: administrative circles at the national level (through proposed legislation) and local governments (through the establishment of partnerships, associations, and joint metropolitan strategies).

Concepts and Methods of Metropolitan Integration

‘Metropolitan integration’ can be defined as the creation or adaption of local management structures to deliver tasks and solve problems which embrace an entire metropolitan area. An analysis of systems of metropolitan management in Europe shows a range of degrees of integration (Kaczmarek and Mikuła 2007a). They can be condensed into two basic forms (Fig. 2.1). In the first, the implementation of institutionalised metropolitan area management is led by and stems from the goals of the state, i.e. ‘top-down metropolitan integration’. In the second, integration stems from local government initiatives and often depends on informal cooperation and joint action, i.e. ‘bottom-up metropolitan integration’.

Fig. 2.1
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Creating metropolitan integration: ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ method (Source: Author)

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In practice, this division is not so clear-cut. The European experience shows that metropolitan integration results from both top-down and bottom-up activities. It is the result of, and often a compromise between, different visions of metropolitan reform at the national level and among local communities and the political powers which represent them. In countries where these visions are relatively consistent, metropolitan reforms have been successful. In those where they are incompatible and where there is a shortage of political or social will, metropolitan management remains a matter of debate.

The ‘top-down’ method of achieving integrated metropolitan management is often a response to low levels of grass-roots cooperation. A demand for improved region-wide infrastructure and economic and social problems often lead central governments to introduce legally binding top-down solutions. Low levels of local government cooperation have been typical in Poland over the past two decades. This is partly because the reorganisation of local governments fragmented relations among governments at the same time as they gained administrative independence. In addition, the long time needed for the reorganisation of the administrative system inhibited the growth of personal and institutional relations among local governments, some of which were soon to disappear. After reorganisation occurred, it took time for new local governments and their employees to come to grips with their new powers and with problems in their newly formed regions. Many local governments were reluctant to cede their powers to a higher-level metropolitan organisation. Moreover, in suburban and rural areas, new administrative structures often resulted in new local councils with political compositions which differed from those of their central cities.

The work of the central government, referred to as ‘metropolitan reform’, is related to the concept of ‘new regionalism’ or ‘new regionalisation’ (Keating 1998). Outside of Poland, since the 1980s, this has been viewed as a process of building (or reinstating) metropolitan regions responsible for a vast range of tasks and with concomitant competences, with their own sources of income. Such regions often operate independently from the central government. They are accountable to the communities to whom they provide services and on whose behalf they implement their own development policies. As well, metropolitan management requires the cooperation and participation of entities from the private and public sector (Metropolitan governance, Fürst 2005). Thus, the construction of a new territorial government in metropolitan areas often depends on the degree to which a civil society has developed and on the acceptance of market economy principles and democratic standards of political and social life.

One can categorise cooperation in European metropolitan areas into four basic forms, ranging from strong, formal, top-down cooperation to weak, informal, bottom-up integration (see Fig. 2.2). These forms are based on the legal form of cooperation, the degree of institutionalisation, the degree of autonomy of executive bodies, and the nature and method of electing (or selecting) people who manage metropolitan governments, their competences and responsibilities, their accountability, and their degree of financial autonomy (see Norris 2001; Fürst 2005).

Fig. 2.2
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A classification of metropolitan area cooperation

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Strong top-down cooperation involves the establishment of a new administrative level which gives metropolitan areas the status of units of local government. Weak top-down cooperation consists of a city and its surroundings joining up to deliver one or a few specific tasks. Strong bottom-up metropolitan cooperation is based on voluntary municipal partnerships and agreements among those administrative units which form the metropolitan area. It may be supported by a legally binding agreement, approved by the central government. Such cooperation embraces a wide range of activities. Weak bottom-up cooperation consists of the establishment of informal or weakly constituted structures such as regular forums, conferences, and consultative bodies, which play an advisory role (Heinz et al. 2004; Walter-Rogg and Sojer 2006). The division between strong and weak depends on the degree to which the agglomeration-wide or metropolitan institutions are developed, their legal status, their degree of political legitimacy, their competences, and the number and nature of tasks they deliver. In this context, ‘collaboration’, ‘cooperation’, and ‘integration’ are most frequently used to describe the co-working of the elements within a system.

Premises for Metropolitan Region Integration

As noted, in Poland, big cities and their hinterlands share a growing number of problems related to suburbanisation and to globalisation processes. Since the start of the 1990s, increased car ownership has fostered the spread of metropolitan areas. New roads, new peripheral retail, warehousing, manufacturing, and new residential developments encourage further decentralisation. In Poland, the best known examples are the gmina of Tarnowo Podgórne and the motorway junction near Wrocław known as Węziel Bielany (Matykowski and Tobolska 2005; Czerwiński 2012; Smętkowski et al. 2009).

As in most of Western Europe, the situation is complicated by lack of a definition of what constitutes a metropolitan area. In the United States and Canada, for example, national census bureaux compile data on urban regions. These areas are based on a range of factors, including density, size of the central city, and the share of residents who commute to work in the central city (see, e.g. US Census Bureau 2012; Statistics Canada Statistiques 2013). Poland does not define functional metropolitan areas and does not maintain a national statistical programme to monitor population and economic growth in metropolitan areas.

In Poland, the situation is more confused. There is no national definition of a metropolitan area. Each voivode planning office delineates metropolitan regions using its own method, generally based on density, and commuting into the core city or cities. This has resulted in metropolitan areas in some voivodes being divided into three regions: a core city (or core cities in the case of the ‘Tri-City’ (Trojmiasto) and Katowice regions); an inner, or first-generation suburban zone consisting of municipalities alongside or close to core cities; and an outer metropolitan zone, with more recent settlement. Some voivodeships identify only two zones: a core city and a metropolitan region. Data from individual voivodeships is shown in Table 2.1. As can be seen in the table, in many metropolitan areas, suburbanisation has spread far beyond the inner ring. In Poznan, just over one-third of the metropolitan population is in the outer ring and just over 40 % in the core city.

Table 2.1 Basic data on metropolitan areas in Poland (2008)
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In Poland, core city populations are declining, whilst suburban populations are growing (OECD 2011, pp. 42–46; Mikuła 2013). Growth in suburban areas is relatively uncontrolled due to weak regional planning. This has led to the spontaneous growth of housing and settlements in suburban communes Wild (1983, pp. 169–180; 195–7) described in some detail as a similar process which took place in (western) Germany in the 1970s. He noted that expansion was due to the lower cost of land in fringe areas, the rise of car ownership, the dispersal of employment and retailing, and the consequent under-provision of infrastructure and services in suburban areas. Shaw (1983, pp. 110–121) described the process of retail decentralisation in German cities during the same period, noting the rise of new forms of retailing, particularly hypermarkets, referring to the lack of cooperation between authorities. He noted that retail activities ‘zoned out’ by one local authority could be accepted by a neighbouring one (Shaw 1983, p. 120). More recently, in eastern Germany, a similar process of retail and industrial decentralisation took place after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic. In Poland, the number of jobs in out-of-town locations has grown in the manufacturing and service sectors. This is due to lack of regional planning and due to competition among local governments for investment. Land is cheaper in the suburbs and gaining planning permission less difficult. The result is a growing amount of travel between one’s place of work, place of residence, and commercial facilities, from the city to the outer districts and vice versa. Most of this is by car: public transport is poorly integrated, which inhibits non-car commuting (OECD 2011, pp. 14–15; 74–6). As a result, the deconcentration of core cities’ functions, including commercial, recreational, and cultural functions, has taken place to the advantage of suburban areas. In tandem, the emigration of taxpayers to outer districts of metropolitan regions, especially people from the higher tax rate group, has reduced the purchasing power of residents in cities and increased it in the suburbs. Central cities have suffered a loss of tax and other income and reduced economic power as businesses have moved to suburban areas. However, central city responsibilities and the costs associated with them have not declined and have often grown. Infrastructure and development needs are often higher in cities, which are also affected by problems in the wider area such as water management or road construction. A common problem arises when the residents of suburban areas use services provided by the core city and pay taxes elsewhere, leaving core cities to finance services and infrastructure of supra-local importance. These problems are not unique to Poland. They have been experienced by cities in Germany (Wild 1983) and the United States for half a century or more (Reynolds 2003).

Boundaries constrain the operations of local governments. Poland has several management levels, each with different legally fixed tasks and competences. The result is a need for cooperation between different administrative levels, such as the commune and the powiat, the commune and the voivodeship, or the powiat and the voivodeship, as well as among governments at the same administrative level.

Thus, metropolitan areas in Poland are characterised by strong fragmentation and competing local interests. Poland’s largest cities are usually separate from geographically larger territorial units, i.e. the commune, powiat, or region. Often, they are themselves administrative regions, either the equivalent of powiats in their own right or denominated ‘cities separated from the powiat’. When the new three-level administrative system was formed at the end of the 1990s, the intention was to guarantee the autonomy of communes in fulfilling their municipal tasks. In practice, this has inhibited the creation of agreements between core cities and the communes and powiats in which they are located. Moreover, the administrative fragmentation of metropolitan regions sometimes results in numerous, overlapping intergovernmental compacts. Some are between just a few governments, and some are more wide ranging. Some embrace the provision of several services and some just one.

Intra-metropolitan cooperation is needed to handle problems and provide services which have an impact beyond the borders of individual local authorities. Some cooperation in areas such as public transport is due to their ‘networked’ character. Some cooperation arises to ensure better and more cost-effective service provision, such as education, healthcare, and cultural institutions. Cooperation can also relate to services and activities which are more effective over a larger area, such as the promotion of tourism and inward investment.

Current national legislation makes no provision for legally binding cooperation among local governments at the same administrative level, such as among communes, or between governments at different administrative levels, such as powiats and communes or powiats with voivodeships. Despite this, the cooperation of cities with their surrounding regions is not a new phenomenon in Poland. For many years, municipal agreements and partnerships have been used to support specific tasks related to infrastructure development and the supply of utilities, especially in areas like water management, waste management, and public transport. Other reasons for cooperation among governments in metropolitan areas arise when a problem, such as unemployment, exceeds the competences of individual local governments or exceeds the territorial limits of individual local governments. This includes the management of regional parks, river catchments, or tourist regions. The need for cooperation also arises in extraordinary situations such as floods and industrial disasters (Kaczmarek 2005) or to maintain disaster preparedness. Cooperation can also arise from technical advances, such as those in new-generation transport or telecommunications which require wider area coordination and cooperation.

There are many advantages in establishing metropolitan areas as management units. Operations to deal with problems which extend beyond the boundaries of individual local units can be more easily coordinated. Integrated management can secure a region-wide tax base needed to pay for metropolitan services. Providing services on a metropolitan scale can reduce costs, increase efficiency, and reduce tax levels. This can give a metropolitan area an advantage over competing metropolitan regions (see, e.g. Oates 2006; Tiebout 1956). Within the European Union, another important factor is an enhanced ability to lobby for and obtain external financial resources, including EU funds, to supplement local budgets and meet local goals. Intra-metropolitan area cooperation can also allow participating governments to develop and harmonise statistical databases on a metropolitan-wide scale. This can facilitate socioeconomic analyses, making it easier to establish development strategies.

However, integration can bring drawbacks. Member communes can lose some independence in managing their affairs. They need to compromise and reach a consensus regarding joint development policies and spatial planning and need to jointly contribute to costs related to the agglomeration area as a whole. They may also need to build a new type of regional identity and agglomerative thinking among residents (‘think metropolitan, act local’).

Metropolitan Reform: Government Proposals

In 2003, the Polish government passed an act mandating regional physical planning in urban areas or obszar metropolitalny (Dziennik Ustaw 2003). These bodies created under this act are in many ways analogous to so-called Metropolitan Planning Organisations in the United States, which have existed in various forms since the 1970s, described in Solof (1998). Such organisations are responsible for ensuring that local infrastructure plans among different municipalities match up properly. Although they were first organised in 1962, they did not gain real powers until 1973. From that time onwards, the US federal government made the organisation of such planning organisations a requirement for obtaining national funding for highways and public transport. In 1991, they took on new powers, becoming the equal of state transportation departments and assuming lead authority for transport planning projects in their urban regions. However, such organisations do not cross state lines and remain limited to transport planning.

In 2008–2009, the government of the Republic of Poland started work on a bill to introduce new forms of cooperation between local government units within metropolitan regions. The latest project (from 2009) was titled ‘National Urban Policy and Cooperation of Local Governments Act’. Although the new act remains a work in progress, there is a general consensus on the need to foster metropolitan governance and the forms it should take.

The goal of the various draft acts, generally referred to as ‘metropolitan acts’, was the establishment of a legal basis to tighten the collaboration of administration units in Poland’s leading metropolitan regions. These are often referred to as ‘agglomerations’ (aglomeracja) or, more widely, as ‘metropolitan areas’ (obszar metropolitalny). The draft acts have aimed to foster socioeconomic and spatial cohesion and effective metropolitan area management. In the proposals, it was agreed that integrated management should be mandatory in three metropolitan areas: Warsaw, the largest metropolitan area in Poland, and the conurbations of Upper Silesia and the Tri-Cities (Trojmiasto) – Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Sopot. In other cases, the establishment of metropolitan units (in Polish – zespół metropolitalny) was to be voluntary. To some extent, the proposed legislation would have complemented the legislation passed in 2003 mandating regional physical planning in urban areas (obszar metropolitalny) (Dziennik Ustaw 2003).

The proposed responsibilities of metropolitan units included obligatory and optional tasks. Mirroring the 2003 mandate on metropolitan physical planning, the legislation called for local government units to coordinate spatial planning; cultural heritage protection; environmental protection; power, heating, and gas supply; the management of the water sources and the water supply system; sewage disposal and treatment; the management of waste disposal sites and municipal waste; traffic and public transport management; and labour market oversight. Other requirements included the joint development of infrastructure-related projects. Metropolitan governments were expected to initiate and develop intergovernmental cooperation to deliver metropolitan-wide services. They were also expected to market the entire metropolitan area and were to be responsible for obtaining and managing the public and private funds required to deliver their tasks.

In general, the structure of a metropolitan unit was to resemble an inter-municipal partnership. The unit was to consist of an assembly, which would be a decision-making and controlling body, and a board, which would be the executive body. The work of a metropolitan unit would be administered by a separate administration, consisting of a unit bureau headed by a unit executive manager.

A metropolitan unit assembly would have consisted of delegates from all the local governments which comprised the metropolitan unit. Each local government would have been represented by one delegate who, by force of law, would have been the commune/town/city/district mayor. However, under the proposals, the metropolitan government would have the exclusive right to adopt statutes which applied to the entire metropolitan area, and to amend them, to adopt a metropolitan area spatial development and management strategy, to decide on directions for the metropolitan unit board’s operations, to accept the board’s operation reports, to adopt the metropolitan unit’s budget, and to decide on the standards and costs of those metropolitan-wide public services with which it was entrusted.

The metropolitan unit assembly would have been able to pass legislation only on a double absolute majority basis. A resolution would need to be approved by the majority of the local government units and also by governments which represented the majority of the metropolitan area’s residents. The executive body of a metropolitan unit was to be a collective board chaired by the mayor of the city with the highest population.

To ensure the cohesion and coordination of the work of voivodeship governments and metropolitan units, the bill proposed the formation of a metropolitan commission with oversight powers, consisting of five representatives from the voivodeship government and five from the metropolitan unit.

As of 2013–2014, the legislation remained dormant. Proposals for some kind of metropolitan governance remain on the political agenda, and as noted below, recent changes in how European Union structural funds are allocated have led to greater metropolitan cooperation. However, metropolitan areas continue to decentralise. Any formal structure created today will become obsolete in a few years. Any attempt to foresee future expansion would mean incorporating mainly rural communes into larger urban areas, subjecting them to land use and other controls, and effectively freezing their land uses and local status.

Bottom-Up Initiatives of Metropolitan Integration

In the absence of national legislation, local governments in metropolitan areas have turned to less formal bottom-up cooperation. This has generally taken the form of single-purpose associations which are among the most popular forms of cooperation between local governments in Europe (Kaczmarek 2005).

Currently, metropolitan cooperation in Poland generally takes one of several forms. Three forms have legal standing. The strongest are unions (in Polish, związki). They are followed by ‘associations’ (stowarzyszenia) and ‘understandings’ or ‘agreements’ (porozumienia). In addition, there are informal and often transient agreements among local governments which have no legal standing. Finally, as in the case of Wrocław, the Wrocław Development Agency has the status of a limited company under corporate law. The national government collects information only on the number of registered unions in Poland. Unions need the approval of the Ministry of Digitisation and Administration (Ministerstwo Administracji i Cyfryzacji), part of the central government, and must also be approved by statute passed by the voivodeship government (see, e.g. Województwo Sląsk 2007).

In 2009, there were 233 municipal associations in Poland, of which 44 operated in metropolitan areas. In 2014, there were 234 (Ministerstwo Administracji i Cyfrizacji 2014). Nearly 35 % of the associations cover neither core cities nor neighbouring ‘first-ring’ municipalities. Only ten included metropolitan core cities. In 2009, the most popular form of cooperation was environmental protection (66 %). This often ties in with water and sewage management (55 %) and waste management (45 %), in addition to tourism and recreation. To a smaller extent cooperation concerns the development of other types of infrastructure, for example, gas supply and heating (14 %) and public transport (16 %).

Among the 44 associations within major metropolitan areas, only a few were metropolitan in character, including core cities and suburban municipalities. A map of Poland’s leading metropolitan agglomerations and the nature of the informal integration in those areas, whether relatively strong or weak, are shown in Fig. 2.3. They include the Metropolitan Transport Association of the Bay of Gdansk, the Municipal Transport Union of the Upper Silesian Industrial District, and the Metropolitan Association of Upper Silesia, later renamed Metropolia Silesia (Silesian Metropolis). These two metropolitan regions are unique among Polish metropolitan areas in that they are not dominated by a single large city. The Gdansk region consists of two large cities and several smaller ones. Upper Silesia consists of a cluster of medium-sized cities. The lead city, Katowice, contains less than 16 % of the population living in the region’s core cities and only 11 % of the population of the broader metropolitan area.

Fig. 2.3
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Metropolitan areas in Poland – ‘bottom-up’ integration

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In 2003, following the initiative of the marshal of the Pomerania Region (voivodeship) and the mayor of Gdansk, the Metropolitan Council of the Bay of Gdansk was established by ten local governments. The main goal of the council was to resolve common development problems in the Tri-City Metropolitan Area. In 2006, the marshal of Pomerania Region; the mayors of Gdansk, Gdynia, and Sopot; and nine other local governments signed a Memorandum of the Gdańsk Metropolitan Area (Majewski et al. 2006). This was followed a year later by the Tri-City Charter, a declaration of intent to prevent destructive competition whilst maintaining respect for the traditions and identities of the three cities. The charter included a catalogue of major tasks to be implemented jointly by the local Tri-City governments. The declaration was followed by the creation of the Metropolitan Transport Union of the Bay of Gdansk (Związek Komunikacyjny Zatoki Gdańskiej), a regional transportation authority that was registered with the Ministry for Administration and Digitisation (Ministerstwo Administracji I Cyfrazacji) on 5 June 2007, embracing 14 municipalities of the Tri-City Metropolitan Area. Its goal was to jointly develop local transport policy and manage local public transport, including integrating the fare system. In 2008, the association introduced a common metropolitan travel ticket to be used across the whole area. Initially, the agreement had more ambitious goals, but disputes between the two main cities, Gdańsk and Gdynia, resulted in the formation of two smaller associations, formed around the two cities. One source of contention was the name of the association: both Gdynia and Gdańsk wanted their city to be part of the association name (Lackowska and Zimmerman 2010). In the end, the two cities agreed to describe the region as the ‘Bay of Gdańsk’ (Zatoka Gdańsku). However, in 2011, Gdynia withdrew from the agreement, and the association was renamed the Gdański Obszar Metropolitalny (Gdańsk Metropolitan Region) which included 17 cities, 8 powiats, and 24 gmina. Its aims included joint purchasing, coordinating local plans, and sharing best practice. Despite the exclusion of Gdynia, there is a strong regional identity. Another informal initiative dates back to 1998: an Internet site with the name Trojmiasto.pl. This commercial site started by advertising cultural events in the region. In 2008, it became a limited company. Today, it offers general information about the area to tourists and residents and maintains a catalogue of local firms and employment opportunities (http://www.trojmiasto.pl/historia.php).

Upper Silesia is an example of a stronger association. In June 2007, 14 local governments in the Upper Silesia (Górno-Sląsk) Voivodeship registered the Górnośląski Związek Metropolitalny (the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union) with the Ministry of Administration and Digitisation. This union consists of 14 city governments, all of which had county status. One of the justifications for the union is that the region needs to work together to generate a critical mass of talent and capital and strengthen the region’s competitive advantage. The aim of the union is to establish a common growth strategy for the region, manage roads and public transport, support the development of the local labour market, support and enhance local education, conduct economic research, and sell the region to prospective investors. The view of the member governments was that although each city individually was relatively small, the agglomeration is the largest in the country in terms of population, with 200,000 firms, a special economic zone, 10 % of Poland’s research capacity, and generating 8 % of GDP.

As far as Poland is concerned, a unique concept of metropolitan integration has been implemented in the Wrocław Metropolitan Area. The focus here is on cooperation in promoting economic development. This has been institutionalised by the Wrocław Agglomeration Development Agency (Agencja Rozwoju Aglomeracji Wrocławskiej). The agency was established through the initiative of the mayor (Prezydent) of Wrocław City government in 2005, initially by eight local governments as the Wrocław Regional Development Agency (Wrocławska Agencja Rozwoju Regionalnego), a non-profit joint-stock company, with shares owned by member governments. However, the origins go back to 1999, shortly after the creation of Poland’s new administrative system. The agency was meant to operate as a supra-local organisation, above municipalities and powiats. Its goal was to support economic development and entrepreneurship within the agglomeration; promote education and the dissemination of information about the region, to encourage foreign direct investment; and provide training. It served, and serves, as a ‘one-stop shop’ to provide investors with a full range of services. Currently, it has 30 governments including the city of Wrocław and the Dolnosląsk (Lower Silesian) Voivodeship government and 28 local communes. The organisation also has several private-sector partners, including a human resources firm and two international property firms. This spontaneous creation resembles similar groupings of local governments in the United Kingdom, particularly that in Greater Manchester (Economist 2013). As in Poland, none of Britain’s local governments embrace an entire metropolitan area. In the absence of national legislation, they have had to cooperate informally to promote broader regional goals. In the Greater Manchester area, ten local governments formed a combined entity as long ago as 1986, which controls the entire transport budget and is run by a ‘cabinet’ consisting of one official appointed by each member municipality. As well, Greater Manchester’s governments have acted in concert to promote the economic development of the entire region, in a way not dissimilar to that seen in Wrocław (see the discussion in Sect. 1.2 of the Introduction).

The metropolitan ‘governance’ concept puts a strong emphasis on informal metropolitan integration. Coordination mechanisms, although not being legally binding, often constitute the start of the road towards more formalised cooperation methods (Kaczmarek and Mikuła 2007a, b).

The expansion of local government cooperation can also be observed in the Kraków Metropolitan Area. Since 2004 it has regularly held forums of the municipalities of the Kraków Metropolitan Area. These have focused on cooperating to create a spatial development plan for the Kraków Metropolitan Area. A subsequent step towards greater integration was the signing of a declaration of cooperation and the establishment of the Kraków Metropolitan Area Council in November 2007. The goals of the council included the construction of ring roads and motorway connections, upgrading roads which connect areas of economic importance, investments in the field of environment protection, waste management, sporting and recreation facilities, as well as projects concerning education, culture, territorial marketing, and public policy. Apart from Kraków, the council consisted of 52 suburban municipalities.

Similar to the Kraków Metropolitan Area, in May 2007, the city of Poznań, 17 suburban municipalities, and the powiat of Poznań signed an Agreement of Cooperation among the Local Governments of the Poznań Agglomeration (Porozumienie o współpracy pomiędzy samorządami aglomeracji poznańskiej). By 2010, the number of suburban municipalities had increased to 20. The stakeholders of the agreement created an Agglomeration (Metropolitan Area) Council. Initially, this acted as a forum for exchanging information among the local governments and for determining potential areas of cooperation. The intent was to cooperate in supporting business initiatives, marketing activities, public transport, education, healthcare, and spatial policy. The members of the Agglomeration Council unanimously supported the founding of a Metropolitan Research Centre. Each municipality provided resources for this purpose, in proportion to its respective population. In June, 2011, the council published a development strategy for the Poznan metropolitan region, titled Poznan Metropolis 2020 (Metropolia Poznań 2020) (Centrum Badań Metropolitalnych 2011). At that time, the organisation took on a new form, renaming itself the Poznan Metropolis Association (Stowarzyszenie Metropolia Poznań).

Although relatively recent, bottom-up agreements should lead to the development of more specific administrative models for metropolitan areas. After 20 years of municipal autonomy, Polish metropolitan areas are starting an integration process in the field of metropolitan governance which has become necessary in response to dynamic processes of suburbanisation. In 2011, the OECD found that around 60 % of all municipalities engaged in some kind of inter-municipal cooperation, although the scope of cooperation was often relatively narrow (OECD 2011, p. 18). They also noted that cooperation was hampered by a lack of legislation regarding agreements and financial commitments. Currently (2013–2014), there are five metropolitan associations in Poland: Gdańsk-Gdynia, Kraków, Poznan, Upper Silesia, and Wrocław. Similar initiatives have also been undertaken by smaller cities and areas, for example, Bydgoszcz-Toruń, Kalisz-Ostrów, Białystok, Rzeszów, and Szczecin.

Problems of Metropolitan Integration

Although discussions are continuing, no decision has been taken regarding the creation of formal metropolitan units. In Poland, integration remains a largely bottom-up phenomenon, with collaboration often organised around single issues. Individual voivodeships remain responsible for defining metropolitan regions on their territory.

In Poland, the level and rate of metropolitan integration are affected by a range of administrative, political, demographic, financial, and social barriers. However, the basic barrier to integrated metropolitan area management is the multiplicity of stakeholders involved. There is a lack of tight hierarchical connections among them. Potential partners include units with different populations and local wealth, as well as different demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. They include administrative units at the commune level or the intermediate (powiat) level. As Soja (2000) noted, the problem of administrative fragmentation in metropolitan areas becomes especially severe when the core city cannot extend its limits. In the administrative reform at the end of the 1990s, city boundaries remained unchanged, even as they were folded into new administrative regions. Today, it is almost impossible for cities to expand their boundaries.

Administrative fragmentation has led to a multiplicity of decision-making entities within increasingly functionally connected areas. This has resulted in conflicting and competing development priorities among local governments and different policies related to the expansion of housing areas, land use, or priorities for extending the transport infrastructure. Decisions taken by individual governments can affect development throughout an entire metropolitan area. Different development potentials among individual governments affect the amount of interest in cooperation and consequently cooperation itself. This is not unique to Poland. A recent OECD study of the metropolitan Chicago region (OECD 2012) found that fragmented government ‘limited capacity to think and act regionally’ and that local government officials, public stakeholders, and even private-sector actors often failed to recognise their interdependence. Instead, local decisions were based on ‘a narrow sense of self-interest’ (OECD 2012, p. 294). The report noted that trying to increase the number of firms in a jurisdiction by luring them from neighbouring jurisdictions with tax incentives was self-defeating, adding that ‘It is preferable by far to attract firms by showing that a pool of talent and organisations exists in the region that can help a newcomer exploit it’ (OECD 2012, pp. 20–21).

In Poland today, there are growing political disagreements between those who live in core cities and those who live in the suburbs. Suburban residents are often characterised by an elevated social status and have political preferences that are typical of the middle classes (McKenzie 1933). These residents are often strongly linked with the core city through their workplace or the places where they consume leisure and other services. Even when the political profiles of the core city and suburban communities are similar, perspectives on the development of the metropolitan area as a whole can be quite different. These are often expressed in local elections which favour candidates who emphasise the strong independence and competitive position of a suburban location and favour highly autonomous and individualistic policies. An increase in conflicts has also been observed between existing local residents and newcomers. Increased population creates a need for new housing, higher expenditure on infrastructure, and traffic problems and can overload public service facilities.

Intra-regional inequality is intensified by what Keating (1995) termed ‘spillovers’. This occurs when residents pay taxes in one area, where they live, but use services provided elsewhere, leading to what Keating called ‘freeriding’ – the financing of services and infrastructure of metropolitan significance by the core city. This phenomenon, which is difficult to measure, complicates the establishment of cooperation in maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of metropolitan reach.

Recent Developments

As noted, in 2014, 234 unions among local governments, and four among counties, were registered with the Ministry of Administration and Digitisation. Some dated back to 1991. Most were extremely specialised, with a focus on sewers and water or waste management. Another 85 had been disbanded.

However, in connection with the European Union 2014–2020 funding round, the Polish government mandated that local governments work together on applications for structural funds. A requirement is that they develop metropolitan area strategic (but not spatial) plans. This planning must include a social dimension. To apply for funds, they must create an ‘integrated territorial investment’ (ITI) organisation (Zintegrowane Inwestycje Terytorialne organisation) or designate an existing organisation to serve as one. The organisation must be approved by the voivodeship government and registered with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Development (Ministerstwo Infrastruktury i Rozwoju).

In response, on 14 February 2014, the Gdańsk region created an ITI Union, consisting of 36 local government members, including 12 cities with county status, 18 gmina, and 6 powiats, and 25 governments with observer status. The new organisation took the name Tri-City metropolitan region (Obszar Metropolitalny Trojmiasta). In March 2014, the city of Kraków and 13 neighbouring local governments announced the creation of a Kraków Metropolitan Association of Local Governments which would serve as the local ITI organisation.

Thus, although top-down efforts to foster metropolitan integration have failed in the past, the use of financial incentives, in the form of EU structural funds, has led to the spread of intra-metropolitan cooperation and metropolitan organisations. Recent Polish experience resembles what took place in America in 1991, when the US federal government passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. This act, and its successor acts, required all federally designated metropolitan areas (so-called metropolitan statistical areas) to establish a Metropolitan Planning Organisation to coordinate transport planning. They had to include not just governments of already urbanised areas within a metropolitan region but those which were likely to become swallowed up by the area over a 20-year period. For the most part, these organisations consist of officials appointed by local governmental jurisdictions; representatives of different types of transportation; including rail, public transport, and road transport; and representatives of state agencies and federal agencies. ISTEA directed additional federal funding to Metropolitan Planning Organisations, expanded their authority to select projects, and strengthened the requirement for a region-wide planning. To ensure compliance, the federal government made the creation of a Metropolitan Planning Organisation a requirement for receiving federal transportation funding.

However, in Poland, although the Ministry of Administration and Digitisation is responsible for approving and overseeing some forms of inter-municipal cooperation, such as unions (Związki), the Ministry of Infrastructure and Development oversees physical planning and is therefore responsible for monitoring newly created Integrated Territorial Investment Organisations.

Conclusion

European experience suggests that strong local leadership advances metropolitan integration (Jouve and Lefevre 2000). Such leadership often comes from core city authorities or from persons at the next highest administrative level. They often initiate cooperation and negotiate its expansion. This has been the case in Manchester and appears to be the case in Wrocław. As Diller (2002) noted, lasting collaboration requires political leaders who are focused on delivering current goals and think of the longer term and within a wider metropolitan framework. They include the political leaders of the core city, such as mayor, but also political leaders in neighbouring local jurisdictions which are functionally integrated with the core city. They may want to tighten their connections with the core city or with other local governments in the metropolitan area. Regional political leaders from a higher level of government (the voivodeship in Poland) may also foster collaboration.

However, in metropolitan regions focussed on a single large city, the fear of the core city’s supremacy and the fear of negative financial and investment-related ‘backwash effects’ can create more barriers to cooperation than in polycentric metropolitan systems (Walter-Rogg and Sojer 2006). Handing some competences to a metropolitan government erodes the powers of larger cities, subjecting them to a hierarchically higher unit: they enter into what Benz (2003) referred to as the ‘shadow of hierarchy’. It is therefore not surprising that the bottom-up metropolitan integration process is most advanced in the polycentric Upper Silesian region (the Silesia Metropolis) and least advanced in the strongly monocentric Warsaw Metropolitan Area.

Regional integration is often more successful if integration efforts are supported by a group of experts who organise and manage the cooperation programme (the German Fachpromotoren and Prozesspromotoren). They include researchers and practitioners, as well as managers who are viewed as technocrats and therefore above local politics. This can be clearly seen in the Silesia Metropolis and the Poznań Metropolis, where research units are designing metropolitan strategy alongside local governments. In the latter case, a special research facility, the Metropolitan Research Centre, has been created to assist in policy formation.

Often, new administrative structures are needed to initiate the process towards metropolitan management. Initially, these may be informal, including forums, round tables, conferences, councils, and working groups (see Brake 1997). Collaboration of local government units is usually ‘horizontal’, grouping governments at the same administrative level. However, this often requires ‘vertical’ support from a higher level of government which encompasses the local units. This kind of integration can form the basis for obtaining external financial assistance. In Poland, the cooperation of local units with voivodeship governments is increasingly apparent in several metropolitan areas, including Poznań, Wrocław, and Upper Silesia. Successful metropolitan governance also requires grass-roots public support. Metropolitan integration, regardless of its form or sophistication, must be accepted by those who reside in local jurisdictions. The initiators of collaboration need to clearly explain why it is necessary and what benefits it can bring. Public support can be fostered by a marketing campaign to make residents aware of the advantages of the proposed changes. Without such a campaign, the integration process may fail. Finally, as the experience of Wrocław and Upper Silesia shows, building cooperation takes time and often occurs in small, incremental steps. These are the challenges that face metropolitan reform in Poland, regardless of whether it is a ‘bottom-up’ or ‘top-down’ process.

The OECD (OECD 2011) has developed a synthetic measure, based on urban labour market areas (ULMA). In Poland, powiats were used as the basic building block. In a manner similar to that used in defining census metropolitan areas in the United States, the delineation of a metropolitan area was based on a core area, determined by urban status and population density, and adjacent areas with a significant level of commuting into the core area. Urban municipalities were defined as those with population densities greater than 300 km−2, rural ones below that level. Powiats in which 85 % or more of the population lived in ‘urban’ gminas were defined as urban; those in which under 50 % lived in ‘urban’ gminas were defined as rural; and those in between were defined as ‘mixed’ (OECD 2011, p. 32). Travel to work information was obtained from the Main Statistical Office. Using this method, it was estimated that about 70 % of Poland’s population was urbanised, as opposed to official estimates of about 61 % (OECD 2011, p. 42). However, this process is complicated, and data on commuting is not collected regularly or comprehensively.