Public-Private Interaction in Greater Paris and Greater London Through the Lens of Economic Promotion Ecosystems[L’interaction public-privé dans le Grand Paris et le Grand Londres au prisme des écosystèmes de promotion économique]

Urban governance literature has yet to significantly contribute to explaining the divergent trajectories of cities. Focusing on the cases of Paris and London during the Third Industrial Revolution, this article highlights the existence of two highly unequal systems of public-private interrelations in these two cities—strong in London, weak in Paris—as well as an unequal medium-term capacity to produce coordinated strategic decisions at the metropolitan scale. It illustrates these two realities by comparing their economic promotion ecosystems, positing the hypothesis that urban economic governance, as a system of fluid and continuous interactions between economic actors and public authorities, plays a catalytic role in city dynamics through its function of reducing transaction costs.