Guest editor's preface metropolitan governance reform: an introduction (original) (raw)

2005, Public Administration and Development

If the political and economic future of our globe is shrouded in obscurity and controversy, there is one striking trend of which we may be certain: our collective future will be even more urbanised than it is now. Current projections estimate that the whole world will be predominantly urban by the year 2007; and the 'developing' world, which has historically been much more rural than the 'developed' world, will itself, on the aggregate, pass the urban threshold by the year 2019 (United Nations, 2002, p. 163). As the world urbanises, it sorts itself into spatially distinct patterns with respect to both density and size. The trajectory of the number and average size of large cities is especially interesting. At the beginning of the 19th century, Peking (now Beijing) was the only city with a recorded population of more than a million. A century later, 16 cities had achieved this size. By 1950, the number had risen to 83, by 1975 to 195 (National Research Council, 2003, p. 85), and by the year 2000 it was estimated that there were 387 cities with one million or more population (United Nations, 2002, p. 309). While there are more and larger cities on the planet, an increasing number of them are located in developing, or 'less developed' and 'least developed' regions of the world, to use the current United Nations nomenclature. Thus of the 195 large cities in the world in 1975, 122 (or 63%) were in the developing regions; by 2000, 297 out of 387 (or 77%) were in developing regions, and by 2015, when it is estimated that the whole world will be well into its urban phase, 449 out of a total of 554 (or fully 81%) will be in the developing world. (National Research Council, 2003, p. 85). Finally, it is worth observing that the average size of the world's largest cities is also growing. Whereas in 1800 the world's 100 largest cities averaged 165,000, the average in the early years of the current millennium is greater than 6 million (National Research Council, 2003, p. 84). In their tabulation of the world's 'megacities'-or cities with more than 10 million persons-the UN observes that in 1950 there were only two, New York with more than 12 million inhabitants and Tokyo with over 11 million. By 1975 there were four, of which two-Shanghai and Mexico City-were in 'less developed regions'. And by 2015 there will be twentytwo, of which all but five will be in the developing world (United Nations, 2004, p. 7). This powerful surge of urbanisation, which has already consolidated itself in Europe, North America and most parts of southern Latin America, is increasingly being fuelled by intra-urban rather than migratory sources of growth. Much of this intra-urban growth will reflect the process of expansion, as large cities embrace rural settlements on their outskirts. In any case, as we are again reminded by the UN, '[a]lmost all the growth of the world's total population between 2000 and 2030 is expected to be absorbed by the urban areas of the less developed regions' (United Nations, 2004, p. 1). These trends of urban growth and consolidation have produced, all over the world, agglomerations that we have termed 'metropolitan areas'. Definitions of what is 'metropolitan' as opposed to merely urban abound, but the Canadian definition of a 'census metropolitan area' can stand as a useful starting point. These areas are defined as 'cities with a very large urbanized core, together with adjacent urban and rural areas which have a high degree of economic and social integration with that core' (United Nations, 2002, p. 134). To these elements we can add the notion of a threshold size for the core city-100,000 in Canada and at least 50,000 (at least until more complex definitions took over) in the United States (Stephens and Wikstrom, 2000, p. 15); and the idea of political and cultural importance (Johnston et al., 2000, p. 501). 'Metropolitan areas' around the world are generally comprised of a number of clustered, multi-centred cities, a large total population (normally over 1 million) and a complex