OECD launches two new city publications

At a high-level roundtable in London, hosted by Centre for Cities, a UK urban policy research unit, the OECD today launched two new major publications focusing on cities – The Metropolitan Century: Understanding Urbanisation and its Consequences and Governing the City.

“The books are the culmination of two years of work on urban trends and governance by the OECD,” said Luiz de Mello, Deputy Director of the Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate for the OECD, at the launch. “By looking at metropolitan areas, we thought we could shed some more light on the drivers of economic growth and social development and try to inform the policy debate that countries are having on what to do to address the needs and challenges in cities.”

The Metropolitan Century: Understanding Urbanisation and its Consequences provides an outline of recent and likely future urbanisation trends and discusses the consequences. The report aims to explain why cities exist, what can make them prosperous and function well and also discusses whether cities are good for residents, for the countries they are located in and for the global environment. It argues that cities exist and grow because they are a source of economic prosperity and offer amenities that benefit their residents.

“One of the key contributions in our point of view has been being able to put together metropolitan data sets for OECD countries, covering close to 300 functional urban areas, and making that data available to policy makers,” added de Mello. “In the two books we managed to look at the trends and economics of urbanisation in OECD countries, and then focus on issues related to governance in functional urban areas and a final look at environmental sustainability.”

Governing the City highlights the variety of governance structures and their central role in the functioning of cities. A particular focus is on governance of transport and spatial planning, and how effective metropolitan governance reforms have been implemented. The report draws from international examples of metropolitan governance mechanisms, and includes a series of in-depth case studies in a selection of six large metropolitan areas: Aix-Marseille (France), Frankfurt (Germany), Athens (Greece), Daejeon (Korea), Puebla-Tlaxcala (Mexico), and Chicago (United States).

Both publications are available on the OECD website – www.oecd.org