30 September - 5 October 2012, Columbus, Ohio, USA

Abstracts for poster and oral (general session and invited symposium) presentations should be submitted by 20 January 2012. To see the full range of topics or to submit an Abstract please visit the EcoSummit 2012 website.

6 and 7 February 2012, Chatham House, London.

Cities are the engines of economic growth, but what do they need to do to secure and maintain this growth over the long term?
This conference will ask how cities can attract investment for their development and what innovative financing solutions are emerging in response to the multi-layered challenges that they face.

• Can the established major world cities compete with the rapidly emerging cities in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East?
• Can investments in major urban areas offer secure and attractive returns that other assets do not? What new instruments and funding models are emerging?
• What respective approaches to investment are succeeding for major urban hubs in developing, developed and emerging economies?

Read the agenda

Efficient Metropolitan Governance - Functioning Urban-Rural Relations

This event was conceived and promoted by the METREX Brussels Antenna and was held in the Parliament in partnership with the URBAN Intergroup of the European Parliament and in cooperation with PURPLE and Eurocities.

METREX Calendar for 2011, summarises the main activities of the Network for the coming year

Report from the METREX Berlin 2010 conference on the theme "Metropolitan Futures - Living, Learning, Creating, Moving " held as a joint conference of METREX and the SCANDRIA Project.

A debate is now beginning, through the European Commission and other institutions, on the meaning of Territorial Cohesion, now that this has been included and approved as an EU objective in the Lisbon Treaty. Members will recall that METREX anticipated, and made a contribution to, this debate in 2007 with the PolyMETREXplus project, led by the Generalitat de Catalunya (through IET), and the publication of the "Framework - Polycentricity and better European territorial balance".

The main ideas from the Framework are now very relevant to the current debate, especially the Vision, Framework and Action Plan. It is for this reason that METREX has published the attached summary "This is not a plan - the ETVF".

Colleagues from the Verband Region Rhein-Neckar arranged a meeting of the Network of German Metropolitan Regions, on 27 January in Brussels, to discuss "The EU Cohesion Policy post 2013 from the Perspective of Metropolitan Regions".

EUSEW 2009 on the theme "Clean-Tech Clusters, Climate Oriented Spatial Planning, Clean Urban Technologies." is being attended by three METREX metropolitan regions - Stuttgart Region, Stockholm Region and the Metropolitan Region of Hamburg to present their newest actions during a workshop at the EU Sustainable Energy Week 2009 in Brussels.

Study Visit to South America in 2009. Supported by the Planning Minister of Chile and hosted in the city of Santiago. Aims to exchange experience in spatial planning and development between European and Latin American metropolitan regions, through case studies and specific experiences in those territories, in order to create an agenda of collaboration to addressing future challenges.

ESPON is the European network of research institutions in spatial planning and development. ESPON concluded at 10-year programme of research in 2006 and held a Seminar with practitioners and users in Bonn in June. METREX was invited to attend and presented 6 issues for possible inclusion in the future 2007-2013 ESPON research programme. These have now been formally presented to ESPON in a Discussion Note.