Metropolis – The World Association of the Major Metropolises has initiated its work on the content of its new edition of the municipal and metropolitan managers meeting – the “City Managers Days 2019” (CMD’19). The CMD aim to develop an agenda whose implementation will be monitored and boosted by the Metropolis Secretary General.
EIPA will be the partner for the next CMD edition
Since 2017, our expert Alexander Heichlinger, Co-Founder and Chair of the European City Economic and Financial Governance Group, from our Centre in Barcelona has been contributing to the CMDs in different forms (e.g. key note, facilitator). This year, he will be coordinating the City Managers Days, which will closely examine the thematic area of “Digitalisation of metropolitan spaces”. Digitalisation emerged as one of the three most pressing topics for metropolitan governance from the conclusions of the “City Managers Days 2018”.
Urban innovation and digitalisation of urban and metropolitan spaces are reality, which creates a huge field of new opportunities related to the management and steering of metropolises across the world. However, these issues also pose big challenges in terms of management and impact on already existing dynamics.
City governments across the globe currently face the triple challenge of:
- delivering better with less i.e. meeting societal & business needs in times of tighter budgets;
- adapting public service provision to demographic, technological, societal and mobility changes;
- improving the business climate through fewer and smarter regulations, reducing administrative burden and the provision of better services in support of growth and competitiveness.
As a consequence, cities and metropolises must be able to adjust to the dynamic and often disruptive changes in the economy and society. This means an increasingly ‘connected’ and digitalised but equally uncertain world. Policies and structures in metropolitan spaces that have been successful in the past might not be sufficient or appropriate to serve citizens and businesses in the future. The ability to reflect today’s needs and to anticipate tomorrow’s, to become agile while or by transforming digitally to adapt to new challenges, must become permanent features for all.
For these reasons, and in order to better prepare and approach this issue for the CMD’19, a brief survey on digitalisation – the CMD’19 Digital City Factsheet –with some key indicators, digital city checks, information about development projects and the most significant city challenges is being circulated among the 140 city members of Metropolis in order to identify and verify the digital advances in the respective local governments across the world.
As last year, the CMD will take place at the same time as the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) in Barcelona on 19-21 November 2019.
