GOLD Report I - UCLG

269number. Advisory councils with this type ofstructure can be found in most metropolitanareas in the United States, For example, theMetropolitan Washington Council of Governments(WASHCOG), was created in 1957 forthe Washington metropolitan area. Thesame structure is also found in El Salvador inthe Council of Mayors for the MetropolitanArea of San Salvador (COAMSS: Consejo deAlcaldes del Área Metropolitana de San Salvador).The Metro Manila Development Authority(MMDA) was created by Filipino legislationin 1995. The council is made up of staterepresentatives and 17 mayors (seven townswith extended powers, and 10 municipalities).It replaced the Manila MetropolitanAuthority, which in 1990 had in turn replacedthe Metropolitan Manila Commission,which was set up in 1975 with relativelyimportant powers. The MMDA is not a territorialcollective. It is a specific public bodyplaced under the direct control of the Presidentof the Philippines. The MMDA is responsiblefor planning, monitoring andco-ordination tasks, but its budgetary resourcesremain limited. It is considered notwell suited to regulating the policies of itscomponent parts because of the weaknessof its integration instruments. The MMDAappears to be caught between the power ofthe state authorities and the desire of the17 municipal authorities to escape fromany direction or restriction imposed by higherauthorities. (Laquian 2001).Compared with a metropolitan developmentcouncil, a metropolitan developmentauthority concentrates more on technocraticfunctions than on political methods ofgovernance. This model has been adoptedby many Indian metropolitan areas,including New Delhi, Bombay, Karachi andColombo.The model of a metropolitan governmentsuperimposed on local authorities providesmore functional integration, and its leadershipis often elected directly by the people. This isthe case in Tokyo and in Toronto.Tokyo’s TMG was created in 1943 by a mergerof the City of Tokyo and the Prefecture ofTokyo. Today, it is a metropolitan prefectureconsisting not only of the central town andits districts, but also the Tama area, whichincludes 39 municipalities, 26 towns, 5localities and 8 villages. It appears thatthe TMG gives priority to running the servicesand development of 23 districts of theCity of Tokyo guided by a system of financialequalization, while running the western partof its territory (Tama) in a more detachedmanner (Vogel 2001).The degree of institutional thickness dependson a metropolitan structure’s financialautonomy. The Chinese centralgovernment has given metropolitan areassignificant scope in taxation and the managementof their own resources, includingbuying and selling of land, tariffs and licensefees and securing loans in China andabroad. In France, the communautés urbainsare responsible for large budgetsthat correspond to their expanded areas ofauthority. The Communauté Urbaine deBordeaux (CUB) budget is twice the size ofthe budget of the City of Bordeaux, in partbecause the CUB carries both compulsoryand optional missions associated with theproduction of large facilities, the modernizationof urban services and the developmentof the local economy.c) Intercommunity co-operationGoverning metropolitan areas can also becarried out by means of agreements betweenand among municipalities. Legislation canprescribe or simplify such arrangements indesignated sectors or services. An intermunicipalagreement, which is the most populararrangement worldwide, can operate even inthe absence of a specific metropolitan institution.Such cooperative agreements havebeen established in quasi-official form withinthe metropolitan areas of Sydney (Kübler2005), Australia, and also in Lima-Callao,Santiago du Chile, and Santa Fe de Bogota inSouth America. They also foster mutual supportbetween large Russian towns and theirsurrounding oblasts (regions) and amongThe degreeof institutionalthicknessdepends on ametropolitanstructure’sfinancial autonomy