Mapping METREX is a project initiated by the Province of South Holland (PZH) in the persons of Mariana Faver Linhares and Frenk Bekkers, and was first presented at the METREX Autumn Conference in Braga, Portugal in 2023.
Since then, Mariana and Frenk have worked on developing a first pilot (version 0) which has been illustrated and submitted to test during a public presentation held online on March 18, 2024.
Intertwined with the outputs of the members’ Survey offering valuable knowledge for the definition of the themes, data and indicators useful to make an effective visualization of the metropolitan dimension, the process led to the panel discussion at the Autumn conference in Bucharest (2024) proving the members’ interest in joining this effort.
Goals and ambitions
The goal of this activity is to deepen the knowledge around the territorial diversity and variety of governance systems as exists in the METREX membership by connecting and visualizing existing information and making it easily available.
The main idea is to learn more about the Members’ situation to create shared opportunities of understanding of the metropolitan dimension in Europe. The collection and visualization of data and can lead to a better understanding across a wide range of aspects including:
- Administrative borders, population and demographic trends, as well as
- Governance systems (what forms of territorial and inter-territorial cooperation),
- Infrastructure systems,
- Land use, and finally
- Projections (data on common challenges like climate change, demographic transition, expected drought, air quality, etc).
There is already a lot of data available at European scale through different platforms, but the information is often fragmented and not focused to the metropolitan scale. The aim is to make it valuable, understandable, accessible, and useful for benchmarking.
THE VIEWER
The pilot elaborated by PZH tried to bring the existing data together in one viewer. This is the link to the pilot platform: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/bf726a46b1dd4343aa18c9d927d12ba1
STREAMS OF ACTIONS
The Province South Holland, supported by the METREX Secretariat, will work in close contact with a core group of members to the definition of a Workplan 2025-2026 including:
- CAPACITY BUILDING – KNOWLEDGE SHARING
The definition of the action plan and agenda for the Expert group
Launch the Expert group and consolidate its working method: Increase and nurture the knowledge platform by sharing experiences and practices in mapping the metropolitan dynamics and phenomena among the members - FUNDRAISING ACTIONS
The creation of a core group of experts to work with in preparation of the application to the ESPON Targeted Analysis
These streams of action work in parallel yet connected to achieve the realisation of the prototype of the operational mapping system (that would help to start fundraising and eventually check with ESPON, or other organizations, what are the possible funding opportunities for such a program).
TIMELINE OF THE PROJECT
PREPARATORY PHASES 2023-2024
- Autumn 2023: Launch of the idea
Spring 2024: testing the pilot version and exchange with members :
Meeting #0: 26 March 2024, online
- May 15-16: METREX Spring Conference 2024 in Brussels
Networking and opportunities for learning and acquiring insightful knowledge.
Informal meeting to update the members
>>> The Conference Report is available online at: https://www.eurometrex.org/events/brussels-2024/
- Summer/early autumn 2024: development of the proposal / idea with inputs from the METREX Program of activities
Meeting #1: 26 June 2024, online
Meeting #2 : 28 August 2024, online
- October 23-25: METREX Autumn Conference 2024 in Bucharest
Discussion built upon the insightful outputs received from the Members’ Survey leading to the identification of possible data and key themes to give consistency to the visualisation of the metropolitan dimension.
>>> The Conference Report is available online at: https://www.eurometrex.org/events/metrex-autumn-conference/
PROVISIONAL ACTION PLAN FOR 2025-2026
- Spring 2025
– Online meeting core group to prepare official launch of the Expert Group
(dates to be defined)
- May 2025: Launch and operationalisation of the Expert Group (EG)
Launch Expert Group (EG) in a hybrid meeting in at the PZH Headquarters in The Hague, NL.
The meeting will be the occasion to work together on the elaboration of the work plan:
- Action plan
- Timeline
- Estimation of the costs / time
- Further refining the viewer:
– Review members’ survey preliminary results and check which data could be relevant for the viewer.
– Decide which platform would be most suitable to host the viewer
– Divide the work on updating the viewer
- 1 – 4 June: METREX Spring Conference 2025 in Gdańsk, PL
– Meeting of the Expert Group, networking and opportunities for learning and acquiring insightful knowledge from other Expert Groups of Network Groups. Sharing best practices.
– EG members discuss the topic and scope for a possible ESPON Targeted Analyses (TA) application
- Summer/early autumn 2025:
EG core works remotely on a possible ESPON Targeted Analyses (TA) application
- METREX Autumn Conference 2025
– Meeting of the Expert Group, networking and opportunities for learning and acquiring insightful knowledge from other Expert Groups of Network Groups.
– EG members go/ no-go ESPON Targeted Analyses (TA) application
- January-February 2026:
Proposal submission ESPON Targeted Analyses (TA)
REFERENCES
Passenger rail performance in Europe
ESPON METRO | The role and future perspectives of Cohesion Policy in the planning of Metropolitan Areas and Cities
(Brno was part of it) might inspire the development of the platform
ESPON IMAGINE – Developing a metropolitan-regional imaginary in Milan-Bologna urban region
(Metropolitan city of Milano was part of it)
ESPON LORDIMAS system ( https://lordimas.espon.eu )
This is an interactive tool developed together with the Commission and the CoR and partners from Living-in.EU movement to help local, metropolitan and regional governments to understand where they are in their digital transformation journey.
Key contact
Group Leader
Mariana Faver Linhares
Province South Holland, NL
Contact at the Secretariat
Viviana Rubbo
Events and Expert Groups manager, METREX
viviana.rubbo@eurometrex.org
Photo by Province South Holland
