Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
and socially just ecological living and economically effective development that
ensures sufficient housing opportunities and the protection and creation of jobs”. In
addition to its general regional planning it has specific responsibility for landscape
and transport planning and the development of a regional park and waste man-
agement system. It also runs the regional transport system and the regional park,
while there is a separate regional economic development agency (VBS) that has
additional offices in Brussels and the United States. The VRS is a partner with this
agency, as well as being one of the members of an association of 30 municipalities
that promotes tourism in the wider region. The regional authority has also been
involved with the development of a major trade fair, various cultural and sporting
events and the redevelopment of the main Stuttgart rail station and its extensive
inner city rail yards. It has helped establish or encourage many regional networks,
formal and informal, with various groups, from business to charity groups. So the
partnerships forged with other bodies have given the VRS a great deal of influence
over many other regional functions in the last 2 decades, from economic develop-
ment to tourism.
One of the most comprehensive, yet complex new city-regional authorities is
the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) which came into existence
in April 2011, with a new constitution in June 2013. This co-operative regional
authority was not a result of a completely new initiative. It had also been preceded
by several other regional governances. One was the Greater Manchester County
Council from 1974 to 1986, which was the top level of a two tier local government
structure, responsible primarily for strategic planning and transport, with most func-
tions still carried out by the lower tier local governments. Later the Association of
Greater Manchester Authorities was created to advise on strategic affairs and to
manage some common delegated services, such as county records, ecology and
geology units, for the 10 unitary authorities. These offices were deliberately scat-
tered throughout the region to deliver examples of the tangible benefits of collabo-
ration to each area. A 2004 national proposal to create a real regional structure for
this area, plus five other councils to the south, failed to get approval. But in 2009
the 10 local authorities of Greater Manchester agreed to support a new statutory
city-regional structure, stimulated by a recognition of the need for more effective
regional planning for common problems in an economic downtown and the increas-
ing acceptance of the idea that city-regions were the engines of economic growth.
The hope was that Manchester could act as a counterweight to the increasing power
of London and the Southeast, perhaps hoping to recreate the way in which it had
become a dominant city in the Industrial Revolution.
The current council is made up of a member from each of its 10 co-operating
unitary local authorities and by 2014 is one of only two new city-regional statutory
structures piloted in the U.K. The GMCA has strategic powers over such functions
as transport, planning, skills development, housing, regeneration, and waste man-
agement. In most cases the council operates on a majority system, but for several
functions, such as budgets and finance, it needs approval by a super-majority, or
seven members. For functions such as the running of public transport, the council
has established a separate committee—the Transport for Greater Manchester Com-
