The Role of Metropolitan Areas in the Governance of Development Challenges: Towards the European Urban Agenda

Accelerated urbanisation is a global demographic trend that takes different shapes in each region and continent. In developing countries the tendency has led to the creation of big megalopolises, but in Europe, where rural-to-urban migration is more mature and the urbanisation rate is highest (70% compared to the world average of 54%), the metropolitan phenomenon has a more polycentric architecture. There has been a transition from a centre/periphery dialectic framework to a more complex reality in which interdependencies between various municipalities continually interact. Furthermore, the notion of what is and is not an urban area has been changing (OECD, 2012), with increasing exchanges between large urban areas and the hinterlands surrounding them through the connections and constant flows of people between diferent municipal administrations (METREX, 2014).