For a political economy of metropolitan scale: the role of public–private relations

The metropolitan scale of urban development and governance has received increasing attention in urban research. Such a scale can be articulated in spatial, economic and political terms. This paper builds on the rescaling thesis and its practical expectations and investigates the engagement of economic players in political activities through which metropolitan scales are constructed. The cases of Paris, Rome and Shenzhen provide evidence of the determinants of how public–private relations shape the metropolitan scale under different conditions. The comparative analyses conclude that the role of global processes, the kind of firms and the role of national contexts are important in determining the ways public–private relations affect metropolitan-scale development.