Leading the way: note from roundtable with Harvey Brookes

In 2010, the city of Auckland, New Zealand, introduced a city-region council and directly elected mayor. Centre for Cities hosted Harvey Brookes, a key architect of the Auckland city-region strategic plan, in a roundtable event to share his experiences of city-region mayoral governance and discuss the challenges, successes and implications for the UK.

The event was especially timely given the growing number of combined authorities in major UK city-regions, the recent announcement of a metro mayor for Greater Manchester, and the relatively strong voices on both sides of the debate for and against metro mayors in UK city regions. This note provides a summary of the themes covered during the roundtable.