The Brno Metropolitan Area is an organic functional unit comprising of the city of Brno and its natural hinterland. This territory is defined on the basis of intensive daily relations (commuting and accessibility). Seven metropolitan areas (or agglomerations) have been outlined in the Czech Republic for the purposes of the Integrated Territorial Investment tool.
The Brno Metropolitan Area is a typical example of a monocentric metropolitan area – this area has a single core, which is the city of Brno – the strongest centre of services, employment opportunities, education, etc. Within the Czech Republic, the Brno Metropolitan Area is one of the most strongly developing regions, the development of which needs to be systematically coordinated. Such a task is not at all a simple one. The Brno Metropolitan Area in fact consists of 184 municipalities (including Brno itself), where more than 720 thousand inhabitants live and their number is growing slightly from one year to another. At the present time, there is no legislative framework in place to cover the administration of metropolitan areas, hence the coordination of activities in the territory takes place on a partnership principle and through communication of the city of Brno with neighbouring municipalities.
From a realistic point of view, the city of Brno already exceeded its administrative boundaries a long time ago. This makes things difficult at different levels of planning, management and administration. These processes in fact are not yet coordinated, let alone backed by legislative acts, as in the case of Western European countries. The city of Brno is aware of this and does not profile itself as a spatial unit, functionally enclosed within its administrative boundaries, but as a part of a broader territory of the Brno Metropolitan Area.
Together, in cooperation with other towns and municipalities, we started writing a new chapter in terms of understanding the notion of strategic planning in the Czech Republic. The ITI Territorial Tool became the right impetus for setting up long-term cooperation between Brno and its neighbouring municipalities, which will be beneficial to all the stakeholders involved. The metropolitan level is also strongly reflected in the city-wide Brno2050 Strategy and is also taken into account in the Strategy of Regional Development of the Czech Republic 2021+.
What are we trying to achieve in the long run by doing this?
An interlinked system of relationships in the framework of the entire Brno Metropolitan Area Brno is an accelerator for its economic development and competitiveness. The objective for the future is to set up systematic metropolitan cooperation, especially in the area of strategic and spatial planning, which will take into account not only the European funds. Thanks to the coordinated development and management of the Brno Metropolitan Area, the growing demands on the quality of the technical and transport infrastructure, the environment, the availability and localisation of public services, housing and business will be continuously met in the future. This will cause the quality of life of the inhabitants of the entire Brno Metropolitan Area to be enhanced. Let us keep our fingers crossed!
In order to target the strategic planning properly, we need to know how large the Brno Metropolitan Area actually is. In the programming period 21+, the delimitation of BMA is based on a uniform methodology by the Ministry for Regional Development of the Czech Republic. The data from the mobile operator and the specific characteristics in the area were used to delimit the area.
In the programming period 2014-2020, a delimitation of the territory of the Brno Metropolitan Area was compiled, which included 167 municipalities and had more than 620 thousand inhabitants. The analysis implies, among other things, that the position of Brno within the South Moravian Region has strengthened over the period of the last 10 years – showing that Brno is becoming an increasingly important centre of the whole area.
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