- Informal Aspects of cross border metropolitan Governance    319 kb by    Nollert, Markus & Schweizer, Michael & Seidemann, Dirk | schweizer@isl.uni-karlsruhe.de    Short Outline Metropolitan areas face all kinds of borders which can lead to structural disintegration. Presenting a case study from the trinational agglomeration of Basel, this paper deals with questions of informal processes in cross border planning. Abstract One of the main topics in European spatial planning is the increasing importance of the definition of metropolitan regions as nucleus for economical prosperity and competitiveness . Those metropolitan regions exist in their functional coherences, but often still have to sharpen the regional profile and overcome physical or non-physical borders, that lead to a disintegration of development, especially where these borders are national borders. The trinational Agglomeration of Basel with its swiss, german and french cities forms such a metropolitan region. Because of the specialty of how problems are handled regarding the different formal planning processes which are still required to cope with national commitments in the three countries, multiple challenges of cross-border-planning are more clearly recognisable than in other regions. Considering the formal planning processes it can be stated that hierarchic planning systems often fail in solving the existing questions. Theses: • Regarding the agglomeration of Basel and the potentials of formal and informal processes it can be stated that informal processes are capable to face the special challenges of spatial planning and metropolitan governance when dealing with cross border issues, while formal planning processes reach their limits. • Informal planning processes have a long tradition in solving questions of spatial development along national boarders. Hence, these regions are of high value to test and establish appropriate informal instruments and processes which later can also be useful in other metropolitan regions. An overview of strategic issues in the greater Basel agglomeration and the case study of the informal planning process “Long term perspectives for an integrated spatial and railway development in the upper and high Rhine region” are the basis to discuss and answer the above mentioned theses. Keywords Cross border planning, informal processes, metropolitan regions Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper