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Never waste a good crisis! This has become the mantra of politicians and civic leaders facing fallout of the recent financial crisis. It declares that crisis can prove fertile ground for positive change, opportunity can spring from ruin, and that infrastructure, processes and institutions can be rebuilt. Financial downturns affect municipalities and regional economies especially acutely. This paper investigates the responses of metropolitan regions to crisis and its effect on collective action to the "opportunities" of crisis. To what degree does a common challenge provoke or strengthen collective action and cooperation between governments in metropolitan regions? To what extent, and under what conditions, does it exacerbate tensions and increase fragmentation? To answer these questions this paper explores the experiences of three city regions - Toronto, Canada; Frankfurt, Germany; and Detroit, USA - in previous recessions as well as the current downturn. These cases exhibit different patterns of regional and local responses and an analysis of these experiences will inform a hypothesis about the effects of crisis on cooperation and metropolitan governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]