Our planet is experiencing increasingly complex challenges and dilemmas that cannot be faced without considering the issue of governance and, in particular, metropolitan governance. “This day is a tool for raising awareness, creating open spaces for dialogue between metropolitan actors and stakeholders, identifying solutions, and bringing the phenomenon of metropolisation closer to citizens”, stated Octavi De la Varga, Metropolis Secretary General, at the opening session of the above-mentioned event. “New approaches and frameworks of governance are fundamental for addressing crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are also required for other challenges like rural-urban migration, human rights violations, environmental issues, and more”, declared Rafael H. Forero H., Urban Policy and Metropolitan Expert at UN-Habitat.

In this sense, the first topic addressed during the debate featuring testimonies from the cities of San Salvador and Barcelona on its metropolitan systems. Yolanda Bichara, Executive Director of the Planning Office of the Metropolitan Area of San Salvador (OPAMSS) asserted: “At this time we are realising that it is not possible to move forward alone. The evolution of the concept of governance has to come with the surname of collaborative”. Co-execution and co-responsibility are elements that must feature in (new) metropolitan governance issues in order to have a greater capacity for advocacy.” Meanwhile, Xavier Tiana, Head of International Relations for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), advocated for a more holistic view of the competences held by metropolitan areas in comparison to other levels of government, where they also have an impact (e.g. culture, health, among others). He also called for “…act as ‘one voice’, a metropolitan response, which, in my opinion, is a question of leadership”.

The debate highlighted inequality and urban conflicts as one of the most pressing problems to be solved in our metropolises. In the second panel of the event metropolises were analysed as a space of inequality; in other words, to what extent violence manifests itself in large metropolises as a result of inequality, and the fact that situations of violence have worsened in the context of the pandemic. “In metropolises, violence manifests itself at different levels and in different ways […] It is important to note that, in metropolises, the three types of violence—direct, structural and cultural—cannot be separated, and violence is rooted in inequality”, explained Arnau Gutiérrez Camps, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University Carlos III of Madrid. “When it comes to rethinking our metropolises, I think it is very important that diagnoses of violence and its causes are carried out at a metropolitan level; that they implement policies related to citizens, community, proximity; improving relations between governments and citizens”, he pointed out.

From Mexico City Government, Mariana Flores Mayén, Executive Director of Institutional Representation, General Coordination of Advisors and International Affairs, emphasised that “When we talk about vulnerabilities we tend to centralise, but what happens when they converge?[…] We cannot have this sectoral vision when we speak of guaranteeing rights, it has to be a question of a universal nature and, in this sense, public policies must have a human vision.” She went on to highlight that “We need to reinforce trust between government administrations and citizens, creating transparent spaces to address those problems.”

The third panel of the event was dedicated to citizen participation in the construction and development of our metropolises, especially in the context of the current pandemic. The complexity of metropolitan spaces—we are talking about cities with peripheries that are in continuous change, development and growth—makes it difficult to implement citizen participation. Borja Prieto, Head of Institutional Outreach for Madrid City Council, declared that citizen participation is “a right, and one that cannot be limited because you have a problem with technology.” We need “government administrations to open up and give way to true participation, because citizens know what they need better than the specialists and politicians in the municipality”, Prieto remarked. These arguments were very much in line with those given by Phédia Gottot, Team Leader for Innovation and Experimentation at Ville de Montréal, who illustrated the concept of participation for co-creation: “We see more and more of an evolution from the merely informing citizens to a stance of co-creation with them[…] We are working on creating spaces for the co-creation of the metropolis in the long term, to ensure participation and not just providing information.”

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