Metropolitan Research Institute

Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest

Functional urban areas – urban governance

UPLIFT Project- Two New Deliverables are Available

At the end of December, the UPLIFT team (the project of which is coordinated by MRI) has submitted two essential deliverables on socio-economic inequalities in Europe. The main aim of the deliverables was to create a theoretical framework for analysing urban inequalities with the main focus of the younger generation (aged 15-29).

The Atlas of Inequalities (Deliverable 1.3) summarizes the main social inequality tendencies in Europe, with a special focus on the urban young adults. The analysis was carried out for the years 2007/2008; 2012 and 2018, which provide us information about inequalities just before and shortly after the economic crisis and then the latest data enables us to see how countries recovered from the crisis with regard to socio-economic inequalities. For the analysis the EU Study on income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) were used. Besides analysing the indicators on the national level, the analysis was carried out on NUTS1 or NUTS2 regions, where data was available.

The Framework Study on Inequalities (Deliverable 1.4) identifies and shortly describes the drivers of inequalities in the context they occur: different governance levels, in different domains (housing, employment, education). In addition an urban typology was created based on the potential linkage of social cohesion (measured by a complex equity index and a labour market exclusion index) and economic competitiveness (measured by innovation index, productivity, globalization and population change). The Metropolitan Areas database was used for this analysis, providing comparable data for the years of 2017/2018 in 110 metropolitan areas.

Please find the studies here:

D1.3 Atlas of Inequalities in Europe

D1.4 Framework Study on Inequalities

A new H2020 Project, coordinated by MRI, was just kicked-off in Budapest

UPLIFT project – “Urban PoLicy Innovation to address inequality with and for Future generaTions” (2020-2022) coordinated by MRI – has successfully launched on 28-29 January in a kick-off meeting organized in Budapest.

The UPLIFT project aims to understand the main drivers of urban socio-economic and spatial inequalities focusing mainly on the younger generation (15-29) in the post-crisis area. The analysis will be done on four levels: (1) understanding the relation between socio-economic inequalities and spatial inequalities on European level, (2) understanding how local policies are able to influence urban inequalities in a sample of 16 functional urban areas, (3) analysing by means of interviews with vulnerable young and policy experts how local policies are in interaction with household decisions in 8 cities. As a result of all these analyses, UPLIFT will create – with the active involvement of vulnerable youth – local Reflexive Policy Agendas: new local policies that are more sensitive to the changing needs of the target group. This co-creation process will be carried out in 4 locations: Amsterdam (NL), Barakaldo (ES), Sfântu Gheorghe (RO), and Tallinn (EE).

Analysis of the governance of five metropolitan areas in Europe (2017)

Client: Metropolitan Authority of Barcelona

Duration: November 2017 – December 2017

The Metropolitan Authority of Barcelona contracted MRI to evaluate the operation of five metropolitan areas in Europe in order to gain practical suggestions on how to intensify the metropolitan cooperation around Barcelona. The metropolitan areas under analysis were Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Manchester, Stuttgart and Zürich. From these five metropolitan areas Stuttgart has the strongest governance structure with a directly elected parliament; Greater Manchester has weaker legitimacy but stronger metropolitan identity, more competences in service provision. The Zürich Metropolitan Area Association has common projects with limited influence so far, but it has an approved metropolitan spatial plan. A somewhat weaker cooperation characterizes Copenhagen, where a strong metropolitan spatial plan is created by the national government, but there is no institutional framework for further metropolitan cooperation in place. A similar level of cooperation operates in Amsterdam, where the institutional structure is evolving incrementally, but they lack the proper spatial framework, and the cooperation is mostly based on bi- and multi-lateral negotiations.

Barcelona Metropolitan Area is more developed than any of these metropolitan features still there are approaches and tools that may be interesting for them like having a directly elected president, building partnership with economic actors, acquiring more devolved competencies, improving the efficiency of spatial planning.

The study elaborated by MRI, Addressing the Metropolitan Challenge in Barcelona Metropolitan Area, was presented in a workshop on the 15 of June 2018 for the decision makers of the Metropolitan Council of Barcelona.

SPIMA – SPATIAL DYNAMICS AND STRATEGIC PLANNING IN METROPOLITAN AREAS (2016-2017)

The spatial concept of Zürich metropolitan Area – METRO-ROK

Client: ESPON EGTC

Duration: November 2016 – December 2017

MRI, under the coordination of Alterra (Wageningen University) and in cooperation with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research was commissioned by ESPON to implement a targeted analysis in order to evaluate the results of metropolitan governance in ten European metropolitan areas, and develop guidelines to improve the efficiency of cooperation, specifically in the field of spatial planning. In all 10 stakeholder areas 6-10 interviews were carried out and all the relevant metropolitan documents were analysed. MRI was particularly responsible for the case of Brno, Prague and Vienna.

The analysis of the cases highlighted that the benefits of metropolitan cooperation are obvious on expert level, while it is much more difficult to convince the local stakeholders. As far as win-win development projects are concerned the cooperation can be set up in a bottom-up way. In case the interests of some of the parties can be hurt at least on the short run than top-down interventions are needed: this is the case when regional or national authorities enter the process and create the legislative framework.

Spatial planning is a good tool for cooperation even in the absence of formal metropolitan organisation. This is usually one of the first steps of cooperation (just after the common transportation systems), however the strength of different spatial plans differs very much and most of them lack the tools for implementation: e.g. these plans can restrict growth where it may be harmful for nature but can hardly accelerate growth where it would be more economical. Still the SPIMA project called the attention of the stakeholders that the survey among the 10 stakeholders discovered the importance of knowledge sharing and the human factor behind the cooperation: one of the most relevant success factors turned to be leadership and putting the question into the political agenda.

Outputs of the projects are available here.