Local Alliances and Metropolitan Planning Issues. How Do Local Elected Officials Negotiate Their Position?

This paper addresses what it means to be a mayor in a metropolitan planning context. Specifically, by looking at the implementation of a metropolitan urban plan concentrating on transit oriented developments, we wish to highlight the interactions at play between local mayors. While pursuing goals related to sustainable development such as increased residential densities, mixed-use development, greater use of public transport, and the preservation of rural land and natural areas, mayors in the North American context also seek growth in the municipalities they represent. Given the contradictions at work, how do local elected officials collaborate to take part in the development of a metropolitan scene including issues of environmental protection? By trying to differentiate their cities, mayors endorse planning innovations. Our goal here is to highlight the alliances and oppositions between local elected officials in order to better understand the sociopolitical processes at work at the metropolitan level by looking at the Montreal Metropolitan Community, an entity that has adopted a metropolitan development plan in 2012. We also aim at providing a portrait of mayors’ specific role in a context where major institutional reforms and increased citizen participation have forced new strategies of regional collaboration.