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ships with their central governments, which encourage them to meet service needs to contribute to local development, as well as to the state’s reputation for effectiveness. Metropolises can be political and cultural capitals, economic hubs, financial centres, geo-strategic gateways, centres of excellence, specialised or centripetal cities or ‘ordinary’ agglomerations. Each of these characteristics, sometimes in combination, defines the profile of a specific metropolis, with its comparative advantages, disadvantages and consequences. Johannesburg is
provoke tensions, instabilities, bottlenecks, insecurities that primarily penalize the most vulnerable segments of the population. Several other variables affect the quality and accessibility of basic services in metropolitan areas: national and global contexts, socio-economic, political and environmental, including such challenges as conflict, insecurity, corruption, climate change, pollution and contamination); administrative and institutional planning, decentralization and managerial capabilities; choices of op-
‘Megacities’ are significantly distinguished from other units of local government by decentralization realities, roles and powers defined by the institutional and national policy context. not Cairo, Shanghai is not New York, Buenos Aires is not Moscow, and Lagos is not London. These metropolises may be different in their form and status as cities, governorates, or metropolitan regions, but all are confronted by the same need to offer their inhabitants high quality basic services. There are a number of limits on metropolitan action in basic service provision: shortcomings in governance (and revenues), administrative borders often made inadequate by demographic spill over; institutional fragmentation that results in confusion around responsibilities; complex multi-level governance, influenced by a plethora of economic, political and social actors (internationally, nationally, or regionally); strategic investment choices uninformed by citizen participation; the strength of elite and rentier economies; massive flows of people and consequent spatial sprawl; socio-economic disparities and segregation which
erating model (public/private/mixed); tools for monitoring and reporting; capacity for adaptation and innovation; the quality of political leadership; demographic indices (aging populations/booming youth); the growth of middle-class demands; socio- economic tensions from unmet demand; level of budgetary and fiscal autonomy; pay scales for civil servants and contractors; obsolescence or saturation of infrastructure; and the relative maturity of economic models and the technical and technological solutions for each service. Concrete examples of these challenges have been documented in Mexico City, Bamako and Casablanca, each the subject of a full report by IRD researchers, available in addition to the GOLD III chapter. Metropolises that have been studied in other contexts include: Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Moscow, Mumbai, Shanghai, Manila, Dakar, Harare, Lagos, Cairo, Johannesburg, and Detroit.