Emerging Country Megacities: How can they be governed? What's the role of Utilities?

There is an increasing number of megacities (5 to 20 million people) worldwide. As most of them are in emerging countries, the challenges are even greater. Can these sprawling complex agglomerations split by inequality be governed? A lot of research says “no”

Dominque Lorrain's book "Métropolis XXL en pays émergents" focuses on four emerging country megacities: Shanghai, Mumbai, Cape Town, and Santiago in Chile. He challenges pessimistic conclusions by focusing on the role that urban utilities and institutions play in running their environments. Although the study doesn’t develop an overriding theory, it argues that city officials have laid the foundation of the mechanisms of governance. This foundation has been laid through finding solutions to concrete problems that mostly involve the construction of major infrastructures and large urban projects to provide essential services such as electricity, drinking water, waste management, etc.

One of the main conclusions of the study is that public utilities provide a structuring function in the governance and construction of institutions for megacities in emerging countries.

This study is food for thought for players in the water sector, as it highlights the governance challenges of megacities and the role of utilities. The objective after all is to better understand the what markets need and how they operate.

View the Chair’s main work online at: http://chaireville.sciences-po.fr.