In the last decade the importance of cities on the Europeanagenda has significantly increased and more recently theissue of city-regions has come to the forefront.The partners initial discussions focused on the way inwhich the very concept of a city-region should be defined,with regard to the different examples present in their ownterritories. This notion of city-regions, which is extremelywidespread in Great Britain, corresponds to an urban area that extends outside the metropolitan area and takes accountof home-workplace journeys that can cross the administrativeboundaries of an urban nucleus and sometimes evena countrys borders.The METROGOV working group aimed to contribute tothe debate on sub-national policy and governance by addingthe evidence base and developing detailed case studiesof good practice.The METROGOV working group set out to achieve thefollowing general objectives:1. To understand what metropolitan cooperation andgovernance has entailed to date2. To identify the added value that comes from city-regionworking, e.g. the economic benefits that have occurred andhow the greater scale of governance has affected economicinitiatives3. To consider how city-regions have reduced parochialism,in particular exploring how these governance structures canimprove social cohesion within the city-region, resulting inbenefits for all inhabitants4. To explore how a successful city-region partnership can beformed and understand how the city-region might be mosteffectively resourced in terms of staff and finance5. To identify limitations and barriers to successful city-regionworking, as well as ways in which these might be overcome6. To reflect upon potential further developments and whatnew arrangements are needed to maximise the potentialAfter a series of working group meetings, the partners cametogether to present their conclusions at the final conferencein May 2007. Achievements: Please refer to the 'Description' field, which also includes the achievements of this project.