This paper examines the emergence of a new paradigm that determines differentiated and conflicting roles in the classic schemes regarding local government, particularly in metropolitan areas, in a process that has emerged as a result of global trends. With roots in the economy, the mercantilization of public goods, and the liberalization and integration of markets, such trends affect traditional institutional designs that grant bounded and subordinate powers to local governments, as part of a sovereigntist model focused on the nation-state. With globalization this scheme has changed, and now local governments in large cities take on new powers that correspond to the emergence of metro nodes linked to global markets, and to the dynamic reconfiguration of economic, political, social and demographic flows. This connection takes place through networks of cities and the integration of regions that feature asymmetrical concentrations of resources and power, thus changing the map of te-rritorial development.