Building the foundations for Inclusive and Future-Ready Metropolitan areas

Building the foundations for Inclusive and Future-Ready Metropolitan areas

As part of MICAD’s mission to support metropolitan areas in leading inclusive climate and digital transitions, the first phase of the project focuses on research, capacities’ assessment, and knowledge-sharing. The work carried out in this phase will provide the foundation and knowledge for the development of actionable tools designed for metropolitan areas, helping them turn challenges into opportunities while learning from international experiences and exchanges.

From the outset of the project, partners have been working together to understand how metropolitan areas can move towards green and digital transitions, analysing and comparing the five MICAD metropolitan areas: Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolia – GZM (Poland), Barcelona Metropolitan Area (Spain), City of Tirana (Bashkia Tiranë, Albania), Chișinău Municipality (Primăria Municipiului Chișinău, Moldova), and Metropolitan City of Milan – CMM (Italy).

The work has combined different methods: desk research, survey, and interviews with city representatives, local experts and practitioners from the MICAD metropolitan areas, and collaborative working groups where metropolitan areas share their practices and reflect together on common challenges and learning needs. This mix of methods ensures that the study is both comparative and context-sensitive, capturing institutional diversity while grounding the findings in local realities.

The objectives of this phase are ambitious but concrete:

  • Understanding the challenges in both Climate and Digital transitions: identifying the barriers, being it legal, financial, or procedural, that make inclusive metropolitan planning difficult, while also mapping out opportunities for multi-stakeholder cooperation.
  • Recognising the role of governance: Climate and digital transitions are not purely technical challenges; they require institutional coordination, stakeholder alignment, and long-term strategic planning. Metropolitan governance structures – whether formal or informal – directly influence how effectively policies are designed, implemented and scaled.
  • Mapping policies and learnings from international experiences: reviewing climate and digital transition strategies at European and national levels, while drawing inspiration from inclusive solutions around the world to enrich following development of the MICAD Toolkit.
  • Identifying learning needs & potentials: assessing existing capacities and listening to partner metropolitan areas to understand what knowledge, examples, tools, and skills are most needed to navigate climate and digital transitions successfully.
  • Designing a Toolkit: bringing all received insights together into the first prototype of a Toolkit, as a strategic guidance with practical instruments and international examples to help metropolitan areas overcome institutional fragmentation, improve thematic integration, and accelerate progress towards resilient, inclusive, and future-ready metropolitan areas.

The research stage aims to generate outcomes that benefit both academia and practice, enriching knowledge on metropolitan governance from an inclusive perspective, while also developing and proposing actionable tools to support metropolitan areas around the world on approaching climate and digital transitions.

With these steps, MICAD is building the foundations for more inclusive and forward-thinking metropolitan planning, ensuring that the shift towards digitalisation and sustainability is not just technical, but also participatory, fair, and adapted to the diverse realities of our metropolises.

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