This article addresses the role of universities in the sustainable management of metropolitan areas, drawing on the outputs from a workshop that brought together academics, professionals and politicians responsible for the urban environmental management of the metropolitan areas of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and São Paulo, Brazil. Urban environmental management is both a field of knowledge regarding the problematic relationship between society and the urban ecosystem and a way of intervening in this relationship. Two issues arise with regard to the role of the university in urban governance when considering the dialogue between knowledge and action implied by this statement: the challenges implied for the university in producing knowledge of urban environmental sustainability, and the most salient characteristics of the intervention of university scholars in metropolitan environmental management projects. Based on five case studies of management projects related to different urban environmental problems presented during the workshop, we identified some of the main challenges faced by university-based experts participating in the city's environmental management, that is, when operating in the interface between academic knowledge and politics.