Reinventar la metròpoli: Barcelona i el model de la Greater London Authority

Abstract

The 1980s meant a new milestone for metropolitan governments. After living a golden age during the 60s and 70s, the restructuring of the political economy entailed that the structures of metropolitan government were questioned and even suppressed. When everything seemed to indicate that the metropolitan governments would be left only as relic, the logic of competition among big cities and the need to reinvent themselves with regard to a sustainable development approach supposed an unexpected renaissance of the metropolitan politics. Today, in contrast of the previous logic that justify their existence from a functional point of view, following technocrat and bureaucratic strategies, the new metro-politics focuses on the competitiveness and on the sustainability, while it puts emphasis on rehearsing new methods of governing. London, shows certain historical parallelism with Barcelona, has been a pioneering city on this governing realm and the Catalan capital could learn from that experience.