Metropolitan Research Institute

Metropolitan Research Institute, Budapest

News

Evaluation of Urban Innovative Action (UIA) proposals in the topic of Housing (2018)

Client: UIA Secretariat

Duration: May 2018

Éva Gerőházi, senior researcher of MRI, carried out strategic evaluation of 26 UIA proposals in May 2018 in the theme of housing. The proposals came from different countries of Europe and aimed at implementing innovative housing projects to be elaborated by local municipalities and their local partners. The main strategic evaluation criteria to award the projects was Innovation, which is not easy to achieve taking into account that housing is a cost intensive sphere where any innovation may have a high risk in implementation. That may have been the reason which is why the projects have more innovation in combining the already tested pilot elements rather than creating a brand new mechanism or solution. The evaluation made it also clear that writing a proposal requires a clear vision of what should be achieved and a well-defined way of how to achieve it as without these precise ideas the proposal becomes a hard-to-follow set of activities which the evaluators cannot judge properly.

Call: 13th Annual European Research Conference on Homelessness, Budapest

FEANTSA’s European Observatory on Homelessness, the Metropolitan Research Institute Budapest and Shelter Foundation Budapest are pleased to announce the 13th Annual European Research Conference on Homelessness in Budapest, on Friday 21 Spetember 2018, entitled Social and Economic Integration of Homeless People. The purpose of this research conference is to explore evidence on levels of and opportunities for social and economic integration of homeless people in Europe and elsewhere.

Caught between the public and the private: Urban cooperative solutions in Central Europe

The edited volume Funding the Cooperative City: Community Finance and the Economy of Civic Spaces was recently published in Vienna, presenting stories and models of community finance and civic economy. The volume’s chapter on Central and Eastern European urban civic initiatives was authored by Hanna Szemző, managing director of Metropolitan Research Institute.

Development of social support system in the housing and utilities sectors in Kazakhstan (2016-2018)

Project duration: 21 November 2016 – 31 December 2018

Client: Government of Kazakhstan and EBRD TC Account Regarding The Programme of Technical Cooperation

The Government of Republic of Kazakhstan has been committed to a broad economic reform program. Part of this reform is improving the tariff policy by introducing cost recovery tariffs in the public utility sector. The aim of the project is to design social protection mechanisms in order to protect the population from excessive burden of coming tariff increases in utility sector. The project includes the identification of main deficiencies in the existing system of Social Support System (SSS) for low income population, preparing recommendations on legal, institutional and methodological changes of the SSS, preparing recommendation for selection of appropriate level of support on a country-wide level or by regions, assessing the need for integration of information systems of various state authorities, developing policies and procedures for implementation of a pilot project and assisting the administration of the pilot city in their implementation and the quality and quantity assessment of the results of the pilot city implementation.

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.

Colleagues of MRI at the “Opening up to an ERA of Social Innovation” Conference in Lisbon 

Eszter Somogyi and Hanna Szemző attended the Opening up to an ERA of Social Innovation Conference on November 27-28th. The Lisbon conference, organized by the EC, the Portuguese government and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation focused on finding ways to promote social innovations, both as a way to increase inclusiveness and to overcome the difficulties caused by budgetary cuts and changing shifts in public financing. Representing HomeLab, MRI’s project focusing on innovations in the housing and employment sector, Eszter and Hanna have focused their efforts on deepening their knowledge and their network in the field.

 

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.

Iván Tosics at the European Metropolitan Authorities forum, Warsaw

Iván Tosics was the keynote speaker of the European Metropolitan Authorities (EMA) forum, which was held in Warsaw on 20 October 2017. The theme of the conference was Metropolitan areas as drivers of development in EU policies. The opening keynote presentation had the title „The Metropolitan Challenge In Europe” and included the following parts: 1. Benefits of metropolitan cooperation and the main bottlenecks; 2. Recent policy trends in metropolitan cooperation in the EU countries; 3. Good practices of metropolitan coordination: planning and governance solutions; 4. EU policies and tools for metropolitan areas: lessons from the present and ideas for the future. Tosics’s presentation is available here (pdf).

In the presence of 100 people, representing metropolitan authorities and areas from EU countries, Ivan gave also the summary of the whole days’ meeting, emphasizing that under the unfavourable conditions of Brexit and he internal debates among EU countries Cohesion Policy is much endangered. Metropolitan areas can become important players on European level if they have good institutional framework. To achieve that both the European and the national levels have to do more, acknowledging the huge advantages of metropolitan cooperation. An important step would be the increasing the urban dimension in the post 2020 Cohesion Policy and giving to metropolitan regions enhanced role in the planning and implementation.

Iván Tosics moderates Urban Development Network workshop in Budapest

Iván Tosics was the moderator of the Urban Development Network workshop in Budapest on 17 October 2017. On the workshop, participants discussed the most important aspects of cohesion policy, including integrated approach, participation, and funding with the representatives of the 23 Hungarian cities with County Rights. The European Commission was represented by Judit Törökné Rózsa (European Commission, DG for Regional and Urban Policy,  Inclusive Growth, Urban and Territorial Development) and her colleagues.