Managing Multiplexity

Abstract

Metropolitan areas are characterized by policy and service fragmentation, not just jurisdictional fragmentation. Studies of vertical and horizontal coordination in metropolitan regions tend to focus on individual services, making them somewhat unrealistic and limiting their ability to capture overall regional governance in a metropolitan world, where individual jurisdictions engage in multiple policy relationships simultaneously. Scholars must address multiplex relationships between governments exchanging and impacted by multiple services in order to provide realistic advice and insights for managers and policy makers. This essay explores the challenges of regional collaboration by examining trends and identifying problems and opportunities that arise from service mutiplexity.