The uncertain metropolization of Rome: economy, space and governance

Since the early 1990s, urban studies have been engaged with the issue of scale, so much so that the ‘urban question’ (Castells 1972) has also become a ‘scale question’, which means “systematically rethinking the relations between urban spaces and supra-urban processes of capital accumulation, political regulation and social struggle” (Brenner 2000: 361). In particular, the issue of scale draws attention to debates regarding changes in metropolitan areas and the role of political rescaling (Brenner 2004). The object of this chapter is an exploration of scalar processes and the role that they play in efforts to reshape the capital city of Italy, Rome. We inquire if, how and why the case of Rome is different from the scalar processes shaping other metropolises. To do so, we consider a variety of causal factors, whose interdependencies lie at the heart of the political construction of metropolitan Rome. This contribution explores the economic, spatial and governance patterns of urban development in Rome and their economic, political and institutional determinants. More specifically, it considers (i) whether the existing/emerging economic, spatial and political patterns have metropolitan characteristics and (ii) if so, what factors influence them. We frame these questions through a focus on theories of metropolization processes (Merenne-Schoumaker 1994; Halbert and Halbert 2007; Krätke 2007; Pyka 2013), while other relevant theories – such as the social and political construction of scale (Cox 1998; Marston 2000, 2001), political rescaling (Brenner 2001, 2003, 2004), nation states and public-private partnership in urban spaces and urban regimes (Mossberger and Stoker 2001; Lefèvre 2009; Kantor et al. 2012) and accumulation strategies ( Jessop 1997) – though very important in our inquiry, remain in the background.