Governance and Metropolitan Areas

Cities around the globe always play vital roles in both local and global levels. Starting at the local level, cities provide their residents with a set of services and products that they need while maintaining an acceptable quality of life and developing local economies. While on the global scale, cities are considered sources of economic growth and the nations driving forces towards development in cultural, social, political and economic life. These roles face restrains as cities expand neglecting their administrative boundaries while experiencing a shortage in either financial or jurisdictional capacity to fulfill their responsibilities. Such expansion and shortage need coordination among local governments through introducing different models of governance targeting successful coordination among local governments. These models of coordination range from voluntary actions among local governments, to the establishment of larger entities at Metropolitan scale. Thus, this paper firstly identifies the evolution of the term Metropolitan and its relation to the City. Besides, the relations between city, metropolitan areas, governance, and performance are described. Thirdly, different models of metropolitan governance will be explored. This paper presents a comparison between different models of metropolitan governance showing that there nothing as best model. It is concluded that enhancement of metropolitan areas governance is directly linked to five main pillars. These main pillars of governance depend more on providing appropriate fiscal powers to achieve effectiveness rather than the selection of the right model of governance (model of coordination).