The AMB brings together more than 30 international experts in a seminar, to contribute to the improvement the future metropolises

The aim is to reflect and offer solutions to the new challenges of metropolises over the world, that were collected on October 2016 in the New Urban Agenda, at the Habitat III conference. With this seminar, the BMA launches a process that will conclude on may 2018, with a metropolitan areas international Congress.

The Barcelona Metropolitan Area (BMA) organized two workdays, the 13th and 14th November, to debate the new metropolitan challenges defined at Quito on October 2016, during Habitat III, the United Nations conference for urban issues. The event has enjoyed the collaboration of the IBEI (Barcelona Institute of International Studies), the Metropolis association and AL-LAs, the euro Latin alliance of cooperation between cities.

Alfred Bosch, vice-president of International Relations and Cooperation of the BMA  introduced the seminar. He claimed that the debates like the New Urban Agenda, the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development or the 2015 Paris Agreements about Climate Change are commitments that have direct repercussion into the future urban conurbations if we want to achieve societies more diverse, equitable, prosperous, cohesive, healthy and sustainable.

The seminar counted on personalities from leading institutions as Paulius Kulikauskas, Inter-Regional Adviser of the UN Regular program for Technical Cooperation at the United Nations Human Settlements Program, or Salvador Rueda, director of the Agència d'Ecologia Urbana de Barcelona, who referred to 15 issues that should to be dealt with from urbanism to achieve this New Urban Agenda. The energy self-sufficiency, the social cohesion or the biodiversity are some examples about it.

Ramon Torra, the BMA manager, exposed that the foundation and path of the BMA is based on a strategical Planning. It is fundamentally linked to the land and also underscored that the institution has realized more than 7.000 projects, many of which designated to the social development of citizens, as the parks management, the clean mobility, the housing policies o the energetic poverty. The knowledge and the experience are the keys to understand the presence of the BMA in Habitat III and the New Urban Agenda in a global scale.

The double vision of the BMA is based on de "glocalization", in other words, the internationalization of the Barcelona brand to attract productive investments and, at the same time, to work on the territory to do local policies and then improve the citizens life. This strength comes in response to one of the aim issues of the New Urban Agenda, in which the solutions to handle challenges and problems of big metropolises are founded in themselves.
Finally, Mariona Tomàs, professor of Political Science and expert in metropolitan governance, has conducted a discussion session with the aim to reflect about the local governments capacities to handle the current challenges of global metropolises.

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Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) Barcelona