When Creativity Meets Metropolitan Governance

scapes or metropolitan regions. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines governance today as “the organization and administration of regional authorities and institutions on the most varied levels as well as the corresponding processes of decision-making, cooperation, and exertion of influence” (OECD 2001). But, as most observers of politico-institutional development will agree, good metropolitan governance is a scarce resource as well. The OECD definition points to aspects that are critical for this paper’s debate on creativity and governance. Governance actors are confronted with the need to develop procedures and structures in order to tackle the complex and intertwined problems of metropolitan regions. Following these lines, Benz and Fürst (2002) explicate that through institutional learning there is the expectation that experiences stemming from governance projects eventually will transform into a lasting renewal of public law and public administrative structures. This paper explores the interrelationships between these two notions, which both seem to be of a rare kind. We hypothesize that good metropolitan governance has to be understood as an interactive, multi-level learning process. Therefore, we present an action model that helps conceptualize how governance on various spatial levels can be managed more effectively. By distinguishing three interconnected structuring systems, that is, governance strategy, governance structures and governance culture, the action model offers openings for integrating creativity as an explanatory determinant into the model (Section 2). Section 3 links creativity with territorial and metropolitan economic development. Section 4 explores how creativity can be put to use for good metropolitan governance with the help of our action model. A case study then helps identify the manifold obstacles of connecting creativity to governance (Section 5). Finally, Section 6 draws preliminary conclusions on the interrelationship between creativity and governance by postulating the use of an action-focused and an instrument-focused creativity approach within the action model for metropolitan governance.