METROGOV
In the last decade the importance of cities on the European
agenda has significantly increased and more recently the
issue of city-regions has come to the forefront.
The partners’ initial discussions focused on the way in
which the very concept of a ’city-region’ should be defined,
with regard to the different examples present in their own
territories. This notion of ’city-regions’, which is extremely
widespread in Great Britain, corresponds to an urban area that extends outside the metropolitan area and takes account
of home-workplace journeys that can cross the administrative
boundaries of an urban nucleus and sometimes even
a country’s borders.
The METROGOV working group aimed to contribute to
the debate on sub-national policy and governance by adding
the evidence base and developing detailed case studies
of good practice.
The METROGOV working group set out to achieve the
following general objectives:
1. To understand what metropolitan cooperation and
governance has entailed to date
2. To identify the added value that comes from city-region
working, e.g. the economic benefits that have occurred and
how the greater scale of governance has affected economic
initiatives
3. To consider how city-regions have reduced parochialism,
in particular exploring how these governance structures can
improve social cohesion within the city-region, resulting in
benefits for all inhabitants
4. To explore how a successful city-region partnership can be
formed and understand how the city-region might be most
effectively resourced in terms of staff and finance
5. To identify limitations and barriers to successful city-region
working, as well as ways in which these might be overcome
6. To reflect upon potential further developments and what
new arrangements are needed to maximise the potential
After a series of working group meetings, the partners came
together to present their conclusions at the final conference
in May 2007.