New Formulae for Managing Public Services. Collaborative and Multilevel Governance in Metropolitan Areas and Small Municipalities

Abstract

One of the main drawbacks of local management in Spain is its high population density in metropolitan areas; hence, the country’s interior has become progressively depopulated, which presents serious problems for rural local governance. On the contrary, in large metropolitan areas, the presence of strong business values, including pressure to favor particular interests, requires innovative instruments, models, and tools for complex decision-making in the face of depopulation and the lack of economic development by designing new models for public-private and multilevel collaboration. In 2018, the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) published the report “Urban Indicators” determining the main Spanish functional urban areas (AUF) with the largest populations being: Madrid (6.71 million inhabitants), Barcelona (4.96 million), and Valencia (1.72 million). This chapter analyzes the new issues that urban actors, instruments, and factors are facing and conditioning this new scenario. Technology is one of its instruments, but not the only one. Through a descriptive approach, and with the ultimate perspective of focusing on the object of analysis, the problem of governance, this chapter is structured in six sections, for which reputed authors and experts in the field have been consulted.