La gouvernance métropolitaine à l’épreuve de ses marges : coalitions périphériques, discontinuités de gouvernance et néolibéralisation des politiques urbaines

This article is an invitation to critically analyze “metropolitan governance” from the point of view of metropolitan fringes and peripheries instead of city-centres. Our aim is to characterize the coalitions of actors built around stakes often considered as non-strategic at the scale of metropolitan policies. In this way, we propose to analyze metropolitan governance not only by identifying which coalition(s) govern, but more precisely which coalition(s) govern which part(s) of the urban space and which metropolitan stake(s). In order to answer these questions, we mobilize materials from two research projects offering two complementary “peripheral” points of view: the territories of urban redevelopment and the territories of logistics development. Thus, it appears that those which govern winning strategic places are not those which govern non-strategic or common places. These spatial divides, that is to say the socio-economic profiles of the territories, are more crucial determinants than the institutional, party-based and corporatist variables to understand and explain the aggregation mechanisms of urban interests. Finally, the perspective on metropolitan governance which we propose constitutes another way of tackling the discussion between the thesis of the neoliberalization of urban policies and the thesis of “the return of the European cities” (Le Galès, 2011a). The existence of a multitude of urban coalitions at stake tends to show that the pluralist urban governance model is only one mode of governance among others within metropolitan areas. This focus on metropolitan fringes and peripheries is thus a way to reconsider urban and metropolitan governance as a multiscale process, which reveals, reflects and reinforces severe hierarchies between sub-metropolitan territories