The expansion of the macrometropolis and the creation of new metropolitan regions: a new trend for institutional metropolization in the state of São Paulo?

Abstract The article evaluates São Paulo’s metropolitan management from 2010 onwards, in light of the state government’s regulation of new metropolitan regions and the consolidation of the São Paulo macrometropolis as a regional scale of planning. The asymmetries of the Brazilian federalism concerning the conflictive and competitive character of intergovernmental relations have been one of the main obstacles to the consolidation of the metropolitan management. With the Metropolis Statute, which came into force in 2015, the new federal legislation reinforces the necessary reflection on the trends of institutional metropolization, which, in the case of São Paulo, has not yet succeeded in overcoming the persistent socio-spatial inequalities expressed in the urban-metropolitan tissue.