Action Plan
2009/2011
Yes
World association of the major metropolises
Board of
Directors
President
Paris-Île-de-France,
Jean-Paul Huchon
Président du Conseil Régional
d’Île-de-France
First Executive
Vicepresident Europe
Barcelona, Jordi Hereu,
Alcalde de Barcelona
Presidente del Área Metropolitana
de Barcelona
Executive Vicepresident
Asia Pacific
Melbourne, Justin Madden,
Minister for Planning/State of Victoria
Executive Vicepresident and
Treasurer North America
Montréal, Gérald Tremblay,
Maire de Montréal
Executive Vicepresident Africa
Abidjan, Djédji Amondji Pierre,
Gouverneur du District d’Abidjan
Executive Vicepresident Latin
America & Caribbean
São Paulo, Alberto Goldman,
Gobernador de São Paulo
Regional Vicepresident Europe
Berlin, Ingeborg Junge-Reyer
Senator for Urban Development
Regional Vicepresident Asia Pacific
Seoul, Oh Se-Hoon
Mayor of Seoul
Regional Vicepresident North America
México, Enrique Peña Nieto
Gobernador del Estado de México
Regional Vicepresident Africa
Antananarivo, Edgard Razafindravahy
President de la Delegation Speciale (PDS)
Regional Vicepresident Latin America &
Caribbean
La Habana, Juan Contino Aslán
Presidente de la Asamblea Popular
Europe, Istanbul
Kadir Topbas
Mayor of Metropolitan Istanbul
Europe, Moscow,
Youri M. Loujkov
Mayor of Moscow
Europe, Bruxelles
Jean-Luc Vanraes
Ministre des Relations extérieures de
la Région de Bruxelles
Europe, Stockholm
Sten Nordin
Mayor of Stockholm
Asia Pacific, Guangzhou
Zhang Guangning
Mayor of Guangzhou
Municipal People’s Government
Africa, Le Caire
Ahmed El Maghraby
Minister of Housing Utilities
and Urban Development
North America, Toronto
David Miller
Mayor of Toronto
Africa, Bamako
Adama Sangaré
Maire du Gouvernorat
du District de Bamako
Africa, Rabat
Omar El Bahraoui,
Président du Conseil Municipal
de Rabat Hassan
Barcelona
Josep Roig
Secretary General
Abidjan
Émile Danho
Regional Secretary Africa
Montreal
Amara Ouerghi
Regional Secretary North America
São Paulo
Stela Goldenstein
Regional Secretary South America
Melbourne
Yehudi Blacher
Regional Secretary Asia-Pacific
Paris-Île-de-France
Philippe Kaltenbach
Regional Secretary Europe
Mission
Metropolis wishes to build a
global alliance between
metropolitan governments
and their associates to
promote urban sustainability:
Metropolis wishes to
accompany the actions of its
members in six priority areas:
• Fostering a cross-sectorial
approach and inter-relations
between the different aspects of
urban sustainability:
environmental, economic, social
and cultural.
• In mutual learning, as a result of
the transfer of knowledge, practices
and experiences between
metropolitan governments and their
associates.
• Acting both in already urbanized
metropolitan regions and ones in
a phase of strong urban growth.
• Defining public-private action and
cooperation projects between
institutions and levels of
government.
• Working to reduce the
sustainability gap and to promote
innovation and metropolitan
governance.
“
The mission of Metropolis is
to accompany cities in
mutual learning, innovation,
governance,
technical/financial
assistance, international
presence and debate.
”
• In innovation, understood as a
result of collaboration between city
governments and groundbreaking
businesses and entities in the
management of urban issues.
• In metropolitan governance,
understood as collaboration
between metropolitan governments
on the one hand and the other
levels of local, regional and state
governments on the other;
public/private cooperation and
public participation.
• In technical/financial assistance,
to mobilize new financial resources
for investments earmarked at
sustainable and efficient
development.
• In presence in international forums
and the defense of city interests
and concerns.
• In the debate about ideas on city
trends and evolution.
Objectives
Metropolis will consider the following for the current period:
01. Promoting mutual learning, training and preparation.
02. Speeding up innovation to find solutions to city problems.
03. Contributing toward metropolitan governance to reduce metropolitan
imbalances.
04. Promoting financial and technical assistance to metropolitan areas
in developing countries.
05. Representing and giving political visibility to metropolitan interests
before national and international institutions.
06. Promoting a reflection on trends in the evolution of cities and
metropolitan policies.
Activities
Some of the activities to be developed include:
STANDING COMMISSIONS
TRAINING
· Eco-Regions and Food Security.
The training activities anticipated in
the plan will be carried out, and
subsidiary offices of the Montreal
Training Institute were created in
Mashhad, Seoul, Cairo and
Moscow.
· Managing Urban Growth.
· Integrated Urban Governance.
· Megacities.
· Partnership for Urban Innovation.
· Global Fund for Cities
Development.
· International Women’s Network.
INTERNATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Metropolis will represent city
interests before international
organizations (especially UN
organizations via ECOSOC and UNHabitat, UNACLA, Cities Alliance,
the World Bank, the US Conference
of Mayors, ICLEI and others) and it
will take part in international activities
and meetings in collaboration with
UCLG.
Metropolis
Member
Cities
Montreal
Toronto
Atlanta
Monterrey
La Habana
Guadalajara
México
Ecatepec
Puebla
Maracaibo
Caracas
Bogota
Quito
Brasilia
La Paz
Belo Horizonte
Guarulhos
Rio de Janeiro
São Paulo
Córdoba
Santiago
Porto Alegre
Buenos Aires
Moscow
Stockholm
Kazan
Manchester
Bruxelles
Paris
Rabat
Harbin
Zagreb
Bucarest
Sarajevo
Madrid
Lisboa
Omsk
Berlin
Barcelona
Alger
Tunis
Casablanca
Istambul
Diyarbakir Tabriz
Sofia
Beyrouth
Athenes
Tel Aviv
Amman
Alexandria
Marrakech
Cairo
Mashhad
Tehran
Esfahan
Ahvaz
Shiraz
Dubai
Nouakchott
Bamako Niamey
Jilin
Shenyang
Beijing
Almaty
Dalian Incheon
Tianjin
Seoul
Daejeon
Gyeonggi
Zhengzhou Gwangju
Daegu
Ulsan
Chengdu
Shanghai Busan
Kathmandu
Wuhan Hangzhou
Changsha Taipei
Chongqing
Kolkata
Taichung
Nanning
Guangzhou
Hanoi
Bangalore
Dakar
Accra Cotonou
Abidjan
Bangui
Addis Ababa
Colombo
Douala
Libreville
Yaoundé
Bangkok
Manila
Kuala Lumpur
Kampala
Surabaya
Brazzaville
Dili
Kinshasa
Jakarta
Harare
Port Moresby
Antananarivo
Johannesburg
Gauteng
Sydney
Melbourne
Commission
1
PRESIDENCY
Île-de-France
Region (Paris)
Eco-Regions
VICE-PRESIDENCIES
Brazzaville,
Caracas and
Moscow
The objectives of the Commission
are the following:
Over this period, the Commission
anticipates:
To present case studies on food
security, open space management
(semi-urban agriculture and
biodiversity) and global warming.
Organizing a food security
workshop in collaboration with the
United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO).
To exchange experiences
with the cities which take part in
Commission meetings.
Disseminate information and
organize training for local authority
managers and the people of an
African country, in collaboration
with the International Training
Institute in Montreal.
To gather the suggestions and
expectations of Commission
members and organize training
sessions.
Organize seminars targeted at the
heads of local authorities.
Develop a reflection to create the
conditions needed for cooperation
exchanges with cities that require
technical support.
Organize a work meeting on global
warming.
Commission
2
Managing Urban
Growth
The purpose of this Commission
is to explore the issues of rapid
urbanisations and liveability of cities:
what makes cities liveable to their
inhabitants and attractive to
investors; and what governments
are doing or should do to protect,
promote and enhance the liveability
of cities.
The areas that the project will
investigate are:
Essential infrastructure:
an assessment of the challenges
and complexities of providing the
essential infrastructure needed to
cope with urban growth, including
an assessment of the relative merits
of upgrading existing infrastructure
versus building new infrastructure.
Inequities and social
exclusion/inclusion:
the Commission will investigate the
effects of various approaches to
building economic and social
opportunities for the least well-off,
and will assess how full participation
in social, economic and civic life
by all improves the wellbeing and
the liveability of cities overall.
Competitiveness and positioning
in the global economy: the
Commission will examine how
planning, design and
implementation of sustainable
urban concepts contribute not only
to the liveability of cities, but also
to their global competitiveness.
The role of governments and
governance: urbanisation, rapid
development of technology and a
globalised economy are redefining
the role of governments. These are
looking for private sector partners
(public/private partnerships) in
providing essential services to their
communities. The Commission will
address this issue through the
experiences of the participants,
with the view to identify preferred
PPP models.
PRESIDENCY
Melbourne
VICE-PRESIDENCY
Cairo
Commission
3
PRESIDENCY
Berlin
VICE-PRESIDENCIES
Porto Alegre and
State of Mexico
Integrated Urban
Governance
This Commission aims to offer good
practices and recommendations
on integrated urban governance
that can help breach the social and
spatial fragmentation that exists in
big cities.
In schools in disadvantaged
neighborhoods, integrated urban
governance can shore up the image
of the school and carry out
groundbreaking projects with new
methods and educational content.
Above all, it involves achieving
better integration of economic
agents and those from civil society,
at both the political level and that
of the public administration, in
decision-making and planning
processes of municipal
governments to make them true
‘co-producers’ and ‘coparticipants’ in the making of
decisions on urban development.
Support for the local economy via
integrated urban governance
consists, among other things, of
supporting local businesses,
creating independent activities,
contributing to the creation of
networks, freeing up access to
microcredits, facilitating access
among local people to jobs and
‘formalizing’ the informal economy.
Three issues are particularly
essential to obtaining integrated
urban governance: education, the
local economy and mobility.
Integrated urban governance
actions permit cities to offer
disadvantaged groups
(economically and geographically)
accessible and efficient means of
transport, as well as managing
overall mobility centered on
participation.
Commission
4
Megacities
Commission 4 aims to discover the
groundbreaking initiatives currently
being promoted in metropolitan
areas of more than 10 million
inhabitants, defined as Megacities.
Major urban agglomerations are
sometimes seen as spaces for
disorganization, traffic jams,
violence, poverty, environmental
decline and atmospheric pollution
- in other words, urban chaos.
However, the taskforce wishes to
share the real experiences of
Megacities and demonstrate that
these cities are not only a source
of problems and challenges but
also of opportunities, particularly
in the context of the globalized
world.
It furthermore proposes
investigating ways of remedying
some of the principal challenges
for the proper management of this
emerging phenomenon, via
exchanges and cooperation
PRESIDENCY
Mexico DF
between counterpart cities that can
share not just the problems, but
also the solutions.
Finally, the Commission aims to
work together with universities,
research institutions and
international organizations that
study and discuss the problems of
major urban agglomerations.
In short, Metropolis proposes a
meeting space for those Megacities
that share a particular problem
because of their size and the
complexity of their government and
management.
Commission
5
PRESIDENCY
Barcelona
VICE-PRESIDENCY
Karnataka
Government
(Bengalore)
Partnership for
Urban Innovation
The commission aims to foster
innovation in cities and local
governments in close partnership
with the private sector and other
interested institutions.
Metropolis wants to set up an active
group of worldwide experts to think
and advise about how innovation
can help local and metropolitan
governments to reach a next stage
in the development of cities and
citizens’ life.
Metropolis has given the
commission a clear mandate:
1. Help governments and their
external partners or stakeholders
in improving the way innovation is
lead, managed and implemented
in cities.
2. Help the Metropolis network of
cities and stakeholders in scaling
up and replicating innovations in
cities.
The Partnership for Urban
Innovation (PUI) program will
organize regular events to review
and demonstrate advances, identify
typical problems of the innovation
process, and document lessons
and conclusions about the
innovation process.
A second and central feature of the
organizational arrangements of the
PUI is a core cluster of innovation
centers, each associated with a
city and one or more private sector
firms and institutional stakeholders
that will anchor implementation
actions in different policy areas.
The Secretariat will also coordinate
with Montreal Training Institute to
facilitate development of training
events and materials that emerge
from the PUI and which can be
integrated into Metropolis’s
program of training and technical
assistance.
Commission
6
Global Fund
for Cities Development
Metropolis and UCLG call on local
authorities and their national,
regional and international
associations, bilateral and
multilateral cooperation agencies
and the World Bank to take part
in the creation of a worldwide fund
for city development.
The fund will be an instrument of
technical and financial engineering
assistance that will provide cities
with access to local and
international financing,
complementing the devices linked
to international financial institutions
that currently exist.
Metropolis calls on international
financial institutions to use this
opportunity to consolidate
financing targeted at poor
countries to promote both the
formulation and the application of
more dynamic urban economic
and social infrastructure policies
and programs, raising the
possibilities of southern cities to
access financing.
Metropolis and UCLG are
currently looking to develop an
appropriate financial instrument
to tackle the present situation
which permits better
understanding of the risks inherent
to projects, improves the
mobilization of internal resources
and cuts the cost of urban
development for local
organizations. This instrument will
provide the knowhow and
experience needed for the cities
that so require them, while also
enabling the realization of
diversified processes of
decentralized cooperation and
facilitating access to international
investors.
PRESIDENCY
Île-de-France
Region (Paris)
Commission
7
PRESIDENCY
Montreal
Metropolis International
Women’s Network
The Metropolis International
Women’s Network, headquartered
in Montreal, is an international space
for exchanges and cooperation
between women who occupy a
political, executive or professional
position in local and metropolitan
areas.
Its main goals are: to improve
women’s representation in local
governments and in decisionmaking processes within local and
metropolitan authorities, and to
facilitate the dissemination of
experiences and good practices
related with good governance.
The Network currently has regional
sections based in: Abidjan, Amman,
Athens, Bamako, Bangui,
Barcelona, Brussels, Dakar, Estado
de México, Mashhad, Pune and
Seoul.
The Network has set the
following goals for the current
period:
To develop and support the
regional sections.
To start up an International
Women’s Network webpage.
To organize iinternational forums
for women.
To participate in international
organizations and events related
with similar themes.
To organize training activities in
collaboration with the Metropolis
International Training Institute and
other international organizations.
To collaborate with international
organizations dedicated to similar
or complementary issues (UNHabitat, UCLG, etc.)
To seek financing from international
and national organizations and
private foundations to carry out
Network activities.
Training
Metropolis International
Training Institute
The Institute’s mission is to enable
cities (institutions and individuals)
to acquire and apply global and
local knowledge to their
development challenges by
delivering learning programs and
sharing activities from formal training
to deeper technical assistance.
The Institute helps cities, their
leaders and managers to build and
improve their leadership and
technical skills as well as their
decision-making approaches.
For the current period, the Institute
will have the following strategic
orientations:
Helping member cities apply
knowledge for development
challenges.
Developing a client-centered
approach to better respond to
cities’ needs and have a higher
impact on change and
competitiveness.
Developing new face-to-face
training programs.
Developing a field study program
for city-to-city learning.
Using appropriate new
technologies for distance learning.
Moving towards decentralization
in order to deliver tailored regional
programs.
Developing and working in
partnerships with cities, universities,
international organizations and
private sector.
To better respond to cities’ needs,
the Institute will also develop
regional branches in Mashhad (Iran)
for cities in the Middle East, and in
Seoul (South Korea) for Asian cities.
HEADQUARTERS
Montreal
Abidjan Accra Addis Ababa Alexandria Alger Almaty Amman Antananarivo Athènes Atlanta Bamako Bangalore
Bangkok Bangui Barcelona Beijing Belo Horizonte Berlin Beyrouth Bogotá Brasilia Brazzaville Bruxelles Bucarest
Buenos Aires Busan Cairo Caracas Casablanca Changsha Chengdu Chongqing Colombo Córdoba Cotonou
Daegu Daejeon Dakar Dalian Diyarbakir Dili Douala Dubai Ecatepec Gauteng Guadalajara Guangzhou Guarulhos
Gwangju Gyeonggi Hangzhou Hanoi Harare Harbin Incheon Istanbul Jakarta Jilin Johannesburg Kampala
Kathmandu Kazan Kinshasa Kolkata Kuala Lumpur La Habana La Paz Libreville Lisboa Madrid Manchester
Manila Maracaibo Marrakech Mashhad Melbourne México México D.F. Monterrey Montréal Moscou
Nanning Niamey Omsk Ile-de-france Port Moresby Porto Alegre Puebla Quito Rabat Rio de Janeiro
Santiago São Paulo Sarajevo Seoul Shanghai Shenyang Shiraz Sofia Stockholm Surabaya Sydney Tabriz
Taichung Taipei Tehran Tel Aviv Tianjin Toronto Tunis Ulsan Wuhan Yaoundé Zagreb Zhengzhou
Secretariat General of Metropolis
Avinyó, 15
08002 Barcelona (Spain)
tel. +34 93 342 94 60
Fax +34 93 342 94 66
metropolis@metropolis.org
www.metropolis.org