Politicians started to think that the agglomerations of Nantes and Saint-Nazaire should have a common vision for local planning and that they are stronger together. In 2001, a communaute de communes was organised around the city of Nantes and a political campaign was launched by the president of the Nantes metropole to promote the idea of joint governance for a larger area that would involve all the communes around the boundaries of the Nantes metropole. Eventually this culture of working together led to the decision to develop the first SCoT (Schema de Coherence Territoriale) as a mechanism to allow more co-ordinated spatial development planning and plan implementation. Satisfaction with the outcomes of this very intense period of collaboration and joint reflection led to the next decision to increase the degree of integration by creating the Nantes Saint-Nazaire metropole, which was launched in 2012.