Help us connect thirty years of metropolitan exchange with the thirty years ahead. Share an image by 28 October 2026 and bring a piece of your region to Rome.
When METREX was founded in Glasgow in 1996, many of the big challenges we face today were not unknown. The Brundtland Report had set out the case for sustainable development almost a decade earlier. The Rio Earth Summit had put climate change on the international agenda. That same year, Habitat II in Istanbul was debating the future of cities.
What the founders could less easily have foreseen was how persistent some of these issues would prove. Nor could they have foreseen how suddenly others would arrive. The COVID-19 pandemic forced metropolitan authorities to rethink public space, mobility and service delivery within weeks, under pressure no strategic plan had prepared them for.
Both lessons matter as we look towards the next thirty years: some of tomorrow’s challenges may already be visible today, while others may emerge in ways we cannot yet anticipate.
Foresight approaches do not try to predict the future. They help us widen the range of futures we can imagine, acknowledge uncertainty and prepare for different possibilities. They also ask what we would need to start doing today to move towards the futures we would prefer, connecting long-term vision with the choices and actions we make in the present.
That is the spirit of the foresight approaches that underspin some of the METREX 30th anniversary activities running through the Rome Conference. Alongside the formal work on the Rome Declaration, they offer a more personal and more playful way of connecting thirty years of shared metropolitan experience with the thirty years ahead.
Send us an image, and the story behind it
Before the conference, we invite you to share one image with a short text of up to 150 words on what it shows and why it matters to you. It can look back or forward:
- Looking back: a moment from your METREX experience, such as a site visit, a conversation, or a conference that changed how you saw your own region.
- Looking forward: an image of the metropolitan Europe you hope (or fear) we will be living in by 2056.
Photographs are welcome. If your photograph includes identifiable people, please make sure you have their permission for it to be shared and reproduced as part of this initiative.
Drawings, collages, paintings and other artworks are also welcome. If you created or edited your image with AI or digital tools, please add a brief note on how it was made. For AI, name the tool(s) used. For artworks, name the technique and materials. This lets us credit your work properly and be open about how each image came about.
A selection of images will be printed as METREX 30th anniversary postcards and shared during the Autumn 2026 Conference in Rome. Contributions may also appear in the anniversary record and on METREX’s online channels.
Bring a piece of your metropolitan region or area
We will also have a collaborative collage activity in Rome, facilitated by the Foresight Expert Group. The collective collage in Rome will build on the work begun in the Helsinki Conference. Where your postcard carries your own message, the collage brings many perspectives together on a single surface.
If you can, bring one or two printed items you are happy to see cut up, such as magazines, newspapers, leaflets, maps, planning brochures or postcards from your metropolitan region. Materials in your own language are especially welcome, as they will help the collage reflect the diversity of the network.
GDPR | Images of real people: if anyone can be recognised in your image, please make sure they have agreed to it being shared before you send it. They should also know how it will be used: on printed postcards, in the conference exhibition, in the anniversary record and on METREX’s website and social media. Group photos from past METREX events are welcome on the same basis. Please avoid images in which children can be identified, and do not use AI tools to depict real people. If you or anyone pictured later wishes an image to be withdrawn, write to info@eurometrex.org and we will remove it from any further use.
How to take part
- Deadline: October 28
- Where to send it: info@eurometrex.org
- Image format: landscape, JPG or PNG, at least 1800 × 1250 pixels so it prints well as a postcard.
Please include:
- your name, organisation and metropolitan region;
- a title and your short text;
- where relevant, the note on how the image was made.
Permissions: if identifiable people appear in your image, please make sure they are happy for it to be shared. By submitting, you confirm that you hold the rights to the image and agree to METREX using it, with credit, as described above
