METROGOV

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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.

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