EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
METROPOLIS
Introduction “Metropolises -not states- rule the world now.” This claim is constantly reiterated to multinational corporations and policymakers by financial analysts, and it raises a number of questions. How should it be interpreted? What institutional transformations and new opportunities and responsibilities will this paradigm shift mean with regard to basic service provision? What new relationships, professions, balances and rivalries will be involved? What models and rules of governance will it entail? Already producing over half of global GDP, metropolises (here defined as cities of over one million people) are the most visible and studied, and attractive urban geographical unit, yet they are neither homogenous nor easily deciphered. The regional chapters of this report demonstrate disparities in the implementation of decentralization, as well as a wide diversity of realities, opportunities, limits, and challenges to basic service delivery today. This same diversity is true of metropolises, where, depending on the socio-economic, political and cultural contexts, a wide variety of delivery models, knowledge and capacities, funding and management models are found, with unequal results.
This chapter attempts to read the current trends in the metropolitan management of basic services. It considers the many constraints to universal provision, including: the exponential urbanization of the planet and the geopolitical re-balancing this entails; the conditions for effective wealth sharing; the ecological and social transitions of societies; climate change and the preservation of natural resources; demographic, cultural, technical and technological transformations, and their consequences for our practices, relationships and institutions. The chapter also reflects on initiatives with the potential to address these challenges. Basic services: metropolitan specificities As agents of the state, and as providers or overseers of basic services, districts, metropolitan regions, and urban agglomerations have responsibilities and powers that are defined by frameworks of decentralization that are not always coherent or evenly applied. These ‘megacities’ are significantly distinguished from other units of local government by organisational realities, roles and powers defined by the institutional and national policy context. Engaged in the (inter)national dynamics of ‘attractiveness’ and ‘competitiveness,’ these national shop windows maintain strong relation-