Towards a Comprehensive Framework for Effective Metropolitan Governance Institutional Arrangements: The Case of Metropolitan Cairo

Abstract

Since the dawn of civilization, cities around the globe have been playing vital roles at the local and global levels. Starting at the local level, cities provide their residents with a set of services and products that they need while maintaining an acceptable quality of life and developing local economies. On the global scale, cities are considered sources of economic growth and the nations’ driving forces toward development in the cultural, social, political and economic life. These roles face restrains as cities expand, neglecting their administrative boundaries while experiencing a shortage in the governmental, financial or jurisdictional capacity to fulfill their responsibilities. Such expansion and shortage require coordination among the local governments through introducing different models of governance targeting successful coordination among local governments. These models of coordination range from voluntary actions among local governments to the establishment of larger entities at the metropolitan scale. Moreover, there is still a growing need to measure the city’s performance as an important tool for policy makers and city leaders to better understand and improve their cities’ performances with regard to service delivery, governance model and/or policy frameworks. Regarding the Egyptian context, especially Metropolitan Cairo, the current system of governance is described as a highly complicated, inflexible, formalized and centralized system since it is more like a local administrative one (i.e. an executive institution of the central government) with a role of