Metropolitan Research Institute
Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest
Iván Tosics, managing director of Metropolitan Research Institute, has a long standing tradition of greeting the new year with a photo essay of issues he learned about in the old one. His photo essay for 2018 treats the issue of the “housing paradox”: how more financing seemingly curbs the affordability of housing across the globe – and no longer only in the so-called “hegde-cities”.
UN-HABITAT, Nairobi & Institute of Urban Development, Kraków
Metropolitan Research Institute prepared the study for the “Western Subregion” of Central and Eastern European transition countries: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) the Visegrad Four countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia), and Slovenia. The detailed analysis of the cities in this region covered overviews on the central topics of Population and Urbanization; The Economic Role of Cities; Social and Housing Issues; Urban Environmental Challenges; Urban Governance Systems; and Emerging Issues.
Nearly the entire staff of MRI researchers participated in the production of the analysis; moreover, MRI actively participated in the preparation of the project’s Summary Report.
EU ESPON (European Spatial Planning Observation Network)
Lead partner: Liverpool John Moores University, coordinator: Prof. Michael Parkinson
The Second Tier Cities project explored the performance of second-tier cities (non-capital economic, political and cultural hubs) in Europe, and showed that the development of these cities would bring greater added value than the further development of the already most developed capital cities. MRI as consortium partner held special responsibility for preparing the Central and Eastern European background study, and for the case studies on Katowice (Poland) and Timisoara (Romania).