Metropolitan areas have a key role in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda. Despite being innovation and opportunities hubs, they encounter many challenges in governance, planning and financing. To support integrated approach to metropolitan development, UN-Habitat and its partners have developed the MetroHUB approach that embraces different aspects of metropolitan development and management including planning, governance and finance, that aims to foster capacity of metropolitan stakeholders on how to address and better manage urbanisation challenges at a metropolitan scale. It provides a vital pool of resources, tools and expertise for developing institutional and human capacity, directly contributing to the New Urban Agenda objective of leaving no one and no place behind.

I. Short Description

By adopting the NUA (Paragraphs 90. 91, 95, 96, 130 and 131 mainly), Member States of the United Nations committed to support the strengthening of the capacity of subnational and local governments to implement: Metropolitan governance, planning and financing. To do so, renewed metropolitan management that incorporates new capacities, competences and new ways of managing cities and urban agglomeration is needed. Therefore, in collaboration with different Partners, UN-Habitat has developed the "MetroHUB" initiatives. MetroHUB focuses on innovative capacity development for key-actors on metropolitan management. This novel approach to plan, govern and finance the urban and territorial development is gaining momentum. The event will showcase one of the innovative tools within the MetroHUB: "The Pyramid of Metropolitan Management". The tool demonstrates how 12 metropolitan management topics can be effectively talked to support the achievement of the NUA on "Leaving no one and no place behind". The tool is highly relevant for those interested in metropolitan development, because it identifies which are the fundamental topics facing a metropolitan area and then find pathways to simultaneously unleash, integrate and articulate the pyramid of governance, planning and financing. One of the key results of that the Pyramid of the Metropolitan Management Tool is to enable an integrated and holistic approach to manage multi-governance planning and financing of metropolitan áreas.

II. Background

Why is it necessary to incorporate an integrating and innovative model for metropolitan management?

Because, with the progression of urban and peri-urban growth, cities are often part of densely populated metropolitan areas and local governments must assume new forms of democratic participation and supra-local governance and implement new inter-territorial coordination mechanisms and strategies. These challenges require innovative actions to achieve the integration of local government, planning and financial capacities to make the way to guarantee the quality of life of its inhabitants more efficient and functional. It is necessary to specify a new metropolitan governance based on integration, participation and equity.

it is estimated that today there are about 500 urban agglomerates with more than one million inhabitants, which are promoters of economic development, attract labor and are recipients of migration for those seeking better education, business and salary opportunities. These metropolises and those that will continue to be shaped by the trend of urbanization should reorient in the short term the way to manage the metropolitan territory and innovate the way to plan, govern and finance the challenges involved in the metropolization of cities, applying a new approach to "Leaving no one and no place behind" in metropolitan management, to ensure a sustainable and integrated urban development focused on people that allows improving quality in cities and communities, following the objectives and guidelines of the New Urban Agenda and the ODS.

Today, there are 33 megacities in the world on all continents. By 2030, the forecasts of the United Nations announce that will be 41 megacities. These mega-cities are investment centers, engines of innovation, connectivity with global networks, economic growth and productivity, and several dynamics of social diversity, which face challenges in demographic, migratory, socioeconomic, political and environmental level, with complexities in the terms of infrastructure, administration and provision of services, by the speed of their growth. Megacities currently represent multiple challenges for urban planning associated with overcrowding, air quality, traffic congestion and income inequalities. This experience of facing challenges, and taking advantage of urban development opportunities of megacities, are a source of knowledgement to guide urban planning from the successes and failures in the management of urban development that should be used to guide the development of the metropolis. The challenges and goals that megacities face today are the issues that metropolis must planning today. Megacities are a source of inspiration for the planning of metropolitan areas.

It is urgent to provide the urban agglomerates, mechanisms and strategies to address metropolitan management that allows them to innovate in the way of managing their capacities and competencies at the local level, escalating them to a metropolitan instance that makes them more viable and efficient management in the improvement of the quality of life in cities and their communities. MetroHUB offers for this purpose, an innovative instrument that includes the 12 key topics to achieve good metropolitan governance through integration, which allows reorienting the way to plan, finance, develop, manage and manage the metropolis, recognizing urban development and sustainable territorial as a fundamental factor to improve the quality of life and prosperity of all.

UN-Habitat, in this purpose through this side event (Workshop MetroHUB), aims to encourage those responsible and interested in metropolitan planning, and urban planners to use and take advantage of the experience in the territorial development of megacities to focus metropolitan management on priority issues that the megacities have already shown us that it is necessary to plan them early, from the focus of the integration of capacities of the cities that make up the metropolis, in order to meet the demand in coverage and quality, according to the speed of growth urban population facing metropolitan areas globally.

The Pyramid of Metropolitan Management is an instrument to address the call to action of the New Urban Agenda and specify actions for the effective implementation of the commitments of transformation in favor of sustainable urban development in metropolises and urban agglomerates. It guides the way of integrating the capacities to govern, planning and finance cities through a supra-municipal instance to achieve efficiency and functionality in metropolitan management, whose pillars is metropolitan knowledge, collaborative culture and political will to integrate and equitative.

III. About the Event – Workshop MetroHub

The side event at the UN-Habitat Assembly will be an opportunity to present MetroHUB's metropolitan management instrument with the 12 topics to "Leaving no one and no place behind" in the metropolitan management and inspirational cases of megacity experience. In addition, it will allow knowing and interacting with the instrument to identify on the part of the participants the topics to be incorporated and implemented in the management of their metropolis and to promote the implementation of an innovative model of metropolitan management in the urban agglomerates that have not yet been established as metropolis.

At the same time, the event will serve as an opportunity to foment collaboration and knowledge sharing of the MetroHUB initiative of UN-Habitat and cities, metropolitan areas and urban agglomerations.

IV. Key Objectives

The Key Objectives for the Side Event are outlined below:

1. Present the Instrument for Metropolitan Innovation "Pyramid of Metropolitan Management"

1.1 Develop the concepts of local government integration for metropolitan management

1.2 Develop the concepts of the integration of local planning for metropolitan management

1.3 Develop the concepts of the integration of finance at the local level for metropolitan management

1.4 Present inspirational cases of megacity experience.

2. Interaction with the "Pyramid of Metropolitan Management"

2.1 Evaluation by the participants, the topics of the pyramid not incorporated in the management of its metropolis or urban agglomerations.

2.2 Identify collaborative opportunities for the exchange of knowledge between MetroHUB and cities 

Programme

14:30 | Welcome and introduction 

• Introductory presentation: MetroHUB, UN-Habitat - RMPU

14:35 | The innovations of UN-Habitat in Metropolitan Management 

• Metropolitan Management Pyramid 
• 12 topics to "Leaving no one and no place behind" in the metropolitan management 
• Inspirational cases of megacity experience: Challenges and opportunities, UN-Habitat – RMPU

14:55 | Interaction of the participants with the "Metropolitan Management Pyramid" (TEAM WORK UN-Habitat – RPMU and Participants)

• Identification of gaps in the implementation of the 12 topic in the management of the metropolis or urban agglomerate that represent the participants.
• Identification of possible collaborations and exchange of knowledge of MetroHUB with the metropolis or urban agglomerations present in the event.

15:20 | Q&A discussion: Innovations in strategies for metropolitan management 

• Questions from audience and/or questions, moderated by: UN-Habitat - RPMU

15:25 | Wrap-up & Closing