Today, I had the honor to speak at MedCities / MedCités conference organized in Barcelona, with the support of Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) and @European Metropolitan Authorithies.

In my humble opinion a Metropolitan Region needs Money and Expertise.

Expertise which could be built through capacity building with collaboration with diffetent stakeholders (academic-private-NGO’s). Is important to build a capacity in order to develop a territorial vision of sustainable development, in order to tackle the issues like mobility & transport, waste, public space, housing, urban Planning and climate change.

Besides expertise is need of money to implement projects which tackle the issues and challenges for a metropolitan area. Financial suport could come from central government, from fees and taxes, from municipal contributions, and external funds (EU Funds).

Governmental money, EU money are representing only 20% of the development projects. Private budget for urban and metropolitan developing is 10 times bigger than public money. So the question is

How to stimulate private Investment to develope public infrastructure? How to develop eficient PPP’ in Meditteranena Metropolitan Region? How to attract private Investors to develop sustainable public infrastracture, in order to contribute to climate neutrality objectives?