Auf dem Weg zu einer metropolitanen Regulation? Der Verein Metropolitanraum Zürich

Abstract. The Metropolitan Region of Zurich is fragmented into eight cantons and marked by ideological cleavages. Nevertheless, the "Association Metropolitan Region Zurich" has established since 2007. The paper asks, how the metropolitan restructuring is possible. Tracing the question, first the scale-debate is opposed to the spatial governance-debate and it shall be argued that the scale-debate serves as a more precise tool of analysis. Building on this theoretical foundation the institutionalising of the association is analysed on the basis of 13 expert interviews. Three points are of particular relevance: First, precisely the fragmentation of the metropolitan region forms a crucial reason for the rapid introduction of the association. Second, the institutionalisation brings a subtle power to the association because it does not openly question the federalist system. Third, its agency manifests in territorial implications such as the revision of a national infrastructure plan or a metropolitan spatial plan, which both are made possible by simultaneous processes of informalisation and formalisation on a new scale. At the end it shall be demonstrated that the association's neoliberal agenda is hardly contested, raising the question of the scale of possible opposition.