Summary
Metropolitan areas have become international and transnational actors by building networks and developing foreign policies thus challenging Nation-States which previously had a monopoly of the relations at the international level. This proposal aims at a better understanding of this « new » role for cities through an investigation of two areas : City networks and cities as actors. In a first phase, we will question first the novelty of this role by analysing the previous European city networks from the Renaissance period to now ; second, we will study the organisation and the functioning of some of these networks and the reasons of the involvement of specific cities. Attention will then turn to the de-construction of cities as actors by analysing the internal functioning of each metropolitan area vis a vis city networks and cities’international policies (in short which actor(s) speak(s) for the city ? Who gets mobilised, why and how in the international area ?).
network flyer (pdf format)
Duration
January 2003 - December 2005
