In Transatlantic Perspective

just last month even the 130.000 Göttingers and the 160.000 Oldenburgers were officially included in the ranks of the metropolitans. According to the federal government's definition, Göttingen, Hanover, Braunschweig, Oldenburg, Bremen, Nuremburg and the Rhine-Neckar Region now qualify as metropoles so as to realize conglomeration advantages in the European competition1. Clearly, the concept of the metropolis has a political dimension, and the question is, to what extent and how we, in this Graduiertenkolleg, want to face up to this reality. My contribution toward this end, today, will be twofold, 1. By comparing North American and European definitions of the metropolis and Metropolitan Studies, I want to identify similarities and differences in the academic discourse and epistemology, 2. I want to trace mutual influences in this transatlantic perspective, though for the recent past we have to admit that the direction of influence has mostly been from North America to Europe- with the import of concepts such as new regionalism, urban regimes, gentrification, LA school etc. Already in the early 1990s, the historian Robert Fishman (on the history of urban form) wrote about how the contemporary city has radically broken with traditional urban spatial structures. It “lacks what gave shape and meaning to every urban form of the past: a dominant single core an