The project MECOG-CE – Strengthening Metropolitan Cooperation and Governance in Central Europe is a new experience for us. It is the first time that Brno is the lead partner of an international project under the Interreg Central Europe programme. The aim of the project is to strengthen metropolitan cooperation and governance in Central Europe in the partner metropolitan areas. The goal of the project is to find the best tools, practices and examples of good practice for strengthening metropolitan cooperation and governance in Central Europe and to apply them in the participating metropolitan areas. The project started in April 2023 and will run until the end of March 2026.

The project entitled Institutionalization of Metropolitan Cooperation as a Factor to Increase the Motivation of Municipalities to Cooperate in Metropolitan Areas dealt with the analysis and evaluation of the motivation of municipalities to metropolitan cooperation and its institutionalization. The main output of the project is a methodology for initiating the institutionalization of metropolitan cooperation in the Brno Metropolitan Area. A project of similar scope and focus has not been implemented in the Central European area so far.  It was a project of the Faculty of Economics and Administration of Masaryk University and the City of Brno acted as an application guarantor. The project lasted two years, from spring 2020 to autumn 2022.

For two years, we have been part of the international Functional Areas in the EU project managed by the European Commission and the World Bank. The aim of the project was to strengthen the capacity of functional areas to plan and finance investments and services beyond the boundaries of their territory. This is because territorial development does not take place strictly within administrative boundaries, but its positive effects are most visible in the whole functional area. Read about the project’s outputs with a focus on the Brno Metropolitan Area and find out more about, for example, the action plan to improve strategic planning at metropolitan level.

The ESPON METRO project – The role and future perspectives of cohesion policy in the strategic planning of metropolitan areas and cities aimed to examine the relationship between metropolitan planning and the implementation of cohesion policy. This international research project focused on metropolitan areas in the European Union in an effort to strengthen their role and influence in the decision-making process for the 2021+ programming period and in cohesion and regional policy in general. The project ran from June 2019 to March 2022 and resulted in three recommendations for the Brno Metropolitan Area.

The international research project ESPON SPIMA – Spatial Dynamics and Strategic Planning in Metropolitan Areas focused on finding the best solutions for planning and managing metropolitan areas. The research compared ten metropolitan areas and created a typology of them. The major contributions are specific recommendations for each of the participating metropolitan areas. The project ran from November 2017 to April 2018 and the Brno metropolitan area was one of the ten European metropolitan areas involved in the project.

Joining Forces was a European project, co-funded under the URBACT II Operational Programme, which addressed the management of metropolitan areas, respectively the cooperation between the city and its hinterland. The aim of the project was to answer the question of how to use tools to ensure effective governance and management throughout the metropolitan area. The project also focused on strategies, specifically how strategies help to address the current challenges that cities (metropolitan areas) face as engines of growth. The project started in October 2008 and ended in May 2010, before the start of cooperation within the Brno Metropolitan Area.