Regionalism and urban reorganization: A Brazilian perspective of metropolitan governance

Abstract

In this paper we intend to discuss the limits and potentialities of the new institutional arrangements aimed at metropolitan and regional governance, with an emphasis on the Brazilian case within a wider international perspective. We will describe the evolution of some solutions adopted in Europe to the dilemma of the organization of metropolitan areas. After a brief analysis of the contemporary institutional vacuum in Brazil, we describe some innovative arrangements implemented in the Greater ABC Region in the 1990s. We conclude that the system of Brazilian metropolitan governance has more similarities with the American model, characterized by a relatively pulverized and competitive system of local actors, than the European approach, which tends to evolve towards a more consolidated metropolitan system of public and private actors, gathered around a series of themes of common interest.