Metropolitan Localized Data in Greater Belo Horizonte, Brazil: A Participatory Strategy to Better Governance
In Brazil, like many other Latin American countries, more than 80 percent of the population is concentrated in urban areas characterized not by individual cities, but by metropolitan areas. Metropolitan planning and management1 became an important issue in Brazil after the approval of the Metropolitan Statute (Federal Law 13,089) in 2015. The experience of the Metropolitan Area of Belo Horizonte (RMBH) is considered a national reference for metropolitan planning and governance. Despite this vaulted status, Greater Belo Horizonte’s management structure lacks an official metropolitan-level monitoring system to track its policies and investments and help planning and decision-making procedures. Brazil has turned to the United Nations’ Agenda 2030–also known as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)–for guidance. For RMBH, SDG 11 (“make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable”) is particularly relevant. This brief describes how the RMBH’s SDG in Action project, a partnership between Metropolitan SDG Observatory (METRODS), University Newton Paiva, and Movimento Nossa BH, developed and tested an indicator framework to monitor the achievement of SDG 11 targets.
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