Contenu du sommaire : Dynamiques des grandes régions urbaines : Lyon-Montréal

In Montreal, as in many other metropolises, problems related to metropolitan management appeared in the nineteenth century. If in those days, these problems could be solved partly through amalgamation of territories, they now require new administrative arrangements. However, the establishment within the region, since 1970, of an urban community, of regional municipalities, of regional development councils and of special - purpose bodies has contributed to a fragmentation of the decision - making capacity that should exist within this territory. As a result, there is unproductive competition, among the various sectors, in the field of urban growth and economic development and an inability to face new issues. In this context, the Quebec government was led to create region-wide institutions, such as a ministry responsible for the metropolis and a metropolitan development commission.

Based on the principle of subsidiarity, recent policy of the Québec government on regional and local development accentuates the role of the Regional Development Council and calls for the implementation, at the local level, of "local development centers". This article looks at the current regional and local consultation practices in the Montréal metropolitan area. It also considers the advent of this new policy on the present partnership between public authorities and community development corporations.

For more than twelve years now , Montreal has witnessed the founding of neigbourhood economic development organizations. These community economic development corporations (CEDC) generate a form of local governance. This article addresses the cooperation basis between local actors fostered by such organizations as well as their terrorial basis and their relations with public authorities. It also focuses on the impact these organizations have reinforcing business local ties.

In the last ten years, the Montreal metropolitan area has undertaken a serious introspection about its institutional future. This current questioning is somewhat different from that of earlier periods of the city's development. While stressing the political dimensions of the ongoing discussion on the future of the Montreal metropolitan area, the present article also tries to explain the economic and spatial constraints under which a city-region is emerging. Analysis of the available data on group interests and on political conflicts in the region does not allow, at least in the near future, a consensual institutional answer to the current investigation on how the Montreal region should be governed to be predicted.

Today, the urban region appears as the result of an attempt to find a better balance between the function and the institution through a new form of territorial restructuring. The Urban Region of Lyon (RUL) which was created at the beginning of the 1970s through the initiative of the state, does not represent just a further administrative division ; it provides a forum for dialogue between different actors. Its development marks a second period of change in the history of relations between communes in the Lyon region, following that resulting from the creation of the 'urban community'. This change results from the period that it seems to prefigure, at a different spatial scale, a new 'project' approach to intercommunal actions. lOver recent years the RUL has been behind an ambitious document (the Charter of objectives - RUL 2010) which seeks to innovate in urban planning and which is integrated into the new conceptual framework of regional planning and development policy in the 1990s. Today, even with more modest objectives, the RUL has a role to play in the search for new forms of urban management-made necessary by the growing complexity of territorial relationships ; this is despite the absence of any political legitimacy for the RUL which prevents it from becoming a true institution of government.

Local endogenous development strategies are today based on a territory for which the combined effects of the recession and globalisation favour a new spatial subdivision ; however, such action has to balance the imperatives of the metropolitan area, based on the strong position of the urban centre, which the minority interests of peripheral districts which result in various forms of compromise, négociation and improvised forms of governance. In this article, new principles of urban management are analysed in the Saint-Etienne region. They show, with certain exception, how new forms of négociation can lead, with their contradictions and conflicts, to a fragmentation of space and to a mystification of the notion of power as local notables take on a new importance.

Since the passing of the décentralisation laws in France, local authorities have given firms various forms of assistence to support or to expand economic activities in their administrative districts. The methods of such intervention have led to antagonism between public and private sector actors and have become a source of disputes. However, if the research for a common regional goal seems legitimate, the nature of territorial systems limits the ability of local authorities to regulate economic policies over areas larger than the commune. The aim of this article is to illustrate this situation using qualitative analyses. Particular attention is given to the différent ways of representing the various actors and the difficulty, at a regional level, of reaching a consensus.