Reflections on Regional governance, via Enrique Penelosa

Great interview with Enrique Penelosa here

A quote:

Many people say that cities should be given more control by their national governments – but I think what’s even worse than having governments controlling cities is having a myriad of municipalities, each one doing whatever they want. It’s completely mad. In Colombia, we have a constitution which gives a lot of independence to municipalities. If they are located exactly where a city needs to grow, they can simply decide “no”. And so that city is instead forced to grow very far away, in a low-density suburban development.

Nice to know that metropolitan fragmentation is a non-American problem. But I suppose it's a problem for federal governments in general--their component units of of governance can't be dissolved and re-arranged the way they can be for more centralized governments (France, China, Canada, present-day UK). When polities have only administrative existence, they can be split and aggregated sort of at will. But when polities are units of governance, it's much much messier. Not that agglomeration is the solution: Witness Rob Ford in Toronto, or the long term consequence of lumping all the NYC boroughs into one city. (Ditto Chicago). But, perhaps, faced with metropolitan fragmentation, perhaps a federation is the only way to go about regional governance. Which implies a federal structure of governance as well, with a bicameral legislator. 'Councils' are questionable in terms of responsibility, and 'borough presidents', rather that supplying (in the words of Michael Dell) 'one neck to choke', seem to result in 'one vote to buy' (or rather, one veto to buy off).