METROMOV - Metropolitan Governance for sustainable mobility

In other words, it is a picture of the institutional reality of Spanish urban agglomerations. This database provides precious information about the model of metropolitan governance, the municipalities involved and the sectors with most and less institutionalization. As in Spain there is not an official or statistical definition of metropolitan areas, the project departed from the concept of Functional Urban Areas (FUA), considered as “densely inhabited city and a less densely populated commuting zone whose labour market is highly integrated with the city” (Eurostat).

According to this definition, the commuting zone contains the surrounding travel-to-work areas of a city where at least 15 % of employed residents are working in a city. In the case of Spain, we find 47 big FUA in 2024, where the central city has more than 100.000 inhabitants. The database was structured considering these 47 Spanish FUAs, and it was necessary that at least 3 municipalities participated in the metropolitan cooperation tools.

In the grid, you will find the 77 instruments of metropolitan cooperation following different criteria. First of all, the models of metropolitan governance, from hard to soft: metropolitan government, metropolitan sectoral agency, “mancomunidad”, consortium, public or public-private company, territorial plan, sectoral plan, association of municipalities, strategic plan. Other complementary information is added, such as: the year of creation; number and names of municipalities that are part of the entity; percentage of territory covered by this tool, etc.

The database is published in open access to ensure transparency, replicability, and future updating. The first version is published in the original language (Spanish).