Local government co-ordination: metropolitan governance in twenty-first century Australia

• Continuing growth of, and interdependencies within, Australia’s metropolitan city-regions increase the need for efficient coordination and effective metropolitan governance structures. • Metropolitan governance structures vary greatly between Australian states, and consequently there are different levels of local government engagement with strategic policy and action. • Australia can gain insights from international examples about possible models for local government coordination and metropolitan governance, and vice versa. • State governments are the dominant actors for urban planning and transport infrastructure and, consequently, also often the driving force for metropolitan strategy-making and coordination at this scale. • Local governments have no constitutional powers, but still hold an important role in metropolitan strategy-making and policy coordination. • Recent planning and infrastructure reforms in Australian states indicate a trend towards further centralisation at state level, with (planning) powers of local government being weakened for both policy-making and in development assessment. • Such trends are being exacerbated by local government reform, pursued in the interest of increased efficiency but often resulting in reduced local control. • The trends of centralisation and weakening of local government powers raise questions about subsidiarity (taking decisions as close to the citizens as possible), democracy and legitimacy. • Nonetheless, there are numerous examples of informal and bottom-up strategic coordination of local government. This often occurs on a sub-regional level within metropolitan regions, and has two objectives: advocacy, and coordination of specific issues (including major projects). • Although often informal or ad hoc, existing experiments in local government can offer examples of how to strengthen and improve government coordination on a metropolitan level. • There is an increasing role for a policy framework for metropolitan regions and that better supports multi-level governance and coordination, including the role of local government authorities.