Contemporary challenges in the management of the metropolitan areas

Abstract

Since the changes introduced by the Federal Constitution of 1988 in Brazil, there is a detachment between the acknowledgment of a metropolis – thus the metropolitanizing process identification and characterization – and the formal recognizance of a metropolitan region. The present text deals with this  metropolitanizing institutional proceedings, debating some of the issues concerning the administration of metropolitan regions (MRs), and approaching the brazilian metropolitanizing process’s different angles: its socio spatial progression, the  increase in number of MRs, the metropolitan administration’s fragmentation and the relative abandon of the problem - absent from the national political agenda. The detachment between the metropolitan process and its legal and institutional  recognizance configurates a key element that contributes to the debate about MRs in Brazil: what they are, how they’re formed, and how the recognizance is related – or not – to regional and national development projects. Furthermore, there is an attempt to identify and characterize the challenges and perspectives regarding the administration of legally constituted MRs – which relates to the debate about the Federation and the cooperation among federative entities.