Introduction: Metropolitanisation and Metropolitan Governance

A growing majority of the world's citizens lives in metropolitan areas. The question of how these areas can be governed has been the subject of a long-running scientific and political debate. This introductory article retraces the main arguments in this debate and argues that it has gained a new scope. Metropolitan governance is no longer a question of local interest limited to single metropolitan areas, but increasingly relates to changes and developments in the organisation of the wider state apparatus.