AML – A key institution for the region’s democratic, sustainable, and inclusive development
In this decade, the Lisbon Metropolitan Area faces structural challenges that go far beyond the municipal level and require integrated, coherent, and ambitious policy responses.
Pressure on the housing market, persistent regional inequalities, constraints on mobility, a growing sense of insecurity, the fragmentation of the social response, the climate emergency, and the need to reposition the region within the European context all point to a clear imperative: metropolitan governance must be strengthened, transforming it into a central instrument of democratic, sustainable, and inclusive development.
The AML is a region where the daily lives of some 3 million people intersect with the economic, social, and environmental forces that shape the country’s capital region, and where a decisive role is played in national competitiveness. But it is also a political arena where democratically elected representatives can come together to seek more effective solutions for the communities they represent.
Fully embracing this reality means moving away from fragmented approaches and replacing them with a proactive metropolitan vision capable of planning, negotiating, investing, and regulating in the name of the region’s collective interest.
The vision guiding our set of proposals for the coming years is based on three fundamental principles: territorial and social cohesion, metropolitan scale, and public capacity, which will enable the AML to transition from a predominantly consultative approach to a gradual process of collective strategic planning.
The AML must establish itself as a genuine regional political entity, with the legitimacy to represent the region as a whole before the State, the European Union, and international partners, to negotiate key public policies, and to create common tools for planning, financing, and implementation.
This measure will strengthen local autonomy by freeing municipalities from constraints that can only be addressed at the metropolitan level.
This regional development project requires a strong, democratic, and strategic metropolitan body that can turn cooperation into action, consultations into decisions, and scale into the common good, making life easier for everyone who lives, works, studies, and visits our region.
It is this ambition that gives meaning, coherence, and consistency to the strategic priorities we propose for our organization: institutional strengthening, housing, mobility, social cohesion, environment and land use planning, innovation, security, and funding and investments.
The strategic objectives underlying these proposals aim to strengthen metropolitan governance, bringing it closer to citizens and making it more focused on concrete results.
An AML capable of spearheading policies on affordable housing, sustainable and inclusive mobility, social cohesion, innovation, urban safety, and climate adaptation.
An AML capable of mobilizing public and private investment.
Above all, an AML capable of planning the region’s future with social responsibility, environmental ambition, and a European vision.
Emanuel Costa
Metropolitan First Secretary