Urban Affairs Review, Ahead of Print.
Planning the development of metropolitan areas makes use of various forms of cooperation between associated territorial units. Regardless of the cooperation form adopted, dialogue is a factor that significantly facilitates solving spatial problems and gaining social acceptance for the selection of project locations. Its characteristics, including content, course, and participants, additionally determine the specificity of governance in a particular metropolis. The article aims to suggest a study of the emergence and improvement of an institutional dialogue and soft planning by comparing the experiences of selected Polish and French metropolitan areas. They represent different approaches to the use of dialogue in emerging metropolitan spaces resulting from different legal conditions, the length of time it takes for units to integrate, and the scale and orientation of strategic or operational interconnections.