Understanding Metropolitan collaborative governance in Chicago: towards a new metro-urban regime approach

Abstract

A growing body of research recognizes urban regions as critical scales for understanding and addressing this century’s most “wicked” problems. However, these problems are often exacerbated by the fact that most urban regions are characterized by jurisdictional and administrative fragmentation, producing challenges in formulating and implementing policies that can tackle the kind of multifaceted issues which span geographic boundaries and levels of governance. This paper explores the applicability of urban regime theory to the analysis of collaborative governance at the metropolitan scale through a longitudinal case study of the Chicago metropolitan region from 1950 through 2025. It proposes a refined metro-regime framework that situates the core elements of regime theory – a governing coalition, agenda, resource/s, and scheme of cooperation – within shifting political, economic, and environmental conditions. Findings underscore four recurring conditions that have facilitated the emergence of metropolitan coalitions across three distinct historical periods: previous forms of regional networks and established patterns of collaboration; changing external conditions such as economic and environmental crises that require cooperation and coordinated regional power to respond; different governmental and private actors lacking enough power to design and implement planning or policies on their own; and leadership fostering and encouraging consensus narratives about the need of broader cooperation among actors and jurisdictions. By extending regime theory to the metropolitan scale and embedding it in long-term historical analysis, this study contributes to a growing body of scholarship on collaborative urban and regional governance. It highlights how local actors navigate fragmentation and uncertainty to forge durable coalitions and calls for comparative research to test the applicability of a metro-regime framework across diverse urban regions.