Projects
Territorial
- diamonds
Designing the Territories of the Future
The regional scale has become vital for maintaining competitiveness in a globalizing, innovation-driven economy. Today, competition occurs not between nations but among cities and regions, which can better support businesses and enhance residents’ quality of life. Key developments, such as the easing of trade barriers, rapid information access, and improved transportation and communication, will greatly shape future cities. Metropoli, a pioneer in large-scale spatial development, collaborates with cities and regional governments to create “Urban Ecosystems of Innovation” and “Territorial Diamonds.” These “Territorial Diamonds” integrate cities (“Points”), transportation networks (“Lines”), and developed or rural areas (“Surfaces”) into cohesive systems. This structure enables regions to leverage shared resources and foster synergies that benefit each part individually through close cooperation.
The project aims to boost this region as the engine of Colombia by integrating strategic proposals of intervention over the territory and incorporating the advances of new digital technologies for the population. Its basis is the articulation of the area as a polycentric urban system strengthened through strategic projects capable of transforming the territory and society.
From the diagnosis based on the problems and opportunities of each department and its main cities, and with the results of an extensive process of participation, socialization and dissemination, the Diamond identifies strategic opportunities and synergies between the different cities and departments from a new scale of the territory. These strategic projects which are agreed with local leaders incorporate urban and territorial initiatives and the new solutions offered by digital technology.
The objective of the Malacca Straits Diagonal characterization is to define a territorial vision from a global and integrated perspective of the whole of this territory. This Diagonal vision Model can inspire the development of cooperation initiatives at local, regional, national and supranational levels.
The Malacca Straits Diagonal concept envisions a dynamic economic corridor connected with high-speed rail, motorways and digital links, assuring the functional integration of a traditionally fragmented region. The concept will connect cities, ports, and airports, adding further potential to extend toward the north until the metropolitan areas of southern Thailand.
The Mexican Diamond is configured around the cities of Guadalajara, Leon, Querétaro and Morelia, along with the Megalopolis of Mexico. It is the most densified urban area of the country, located on the main axes of national development, with immediate access to the main ports, the Pacific and the Atlantic and interconnected by a dense network of highways, railways and airports. Here are the conditions for articulating a large urban region by configuring a more powerful structure in the line of processes that are shaping the main economic nodes of the world.
It is a space with greater diversity and, therefore, with greater opportunities and an increased capacity to benefit from the complementarities between different areas and spaces with different characteristics. Diversity, complexity, density, openness to the outside, connectivity and possibilities of interrelation are the essential factors to promote creative and innovative spaces, sustainable and competitive.
The ‘America 2050’ strategy is focused on researching innovative policies and investment schemes that will maximise the competitiveness and quality of life of the ten emerging mega-regions within the United States.
America’s mega-regions are composed of the city centres, suburban areas, and hinterlands into which several cities have grown. They play an active and influential socio-economic role in the United States at both the micro and global scales. These mega-regions are defined by five layers of relationships (environmental systems and landscape, networks of infrastructure, economic links, settlement patterns and land use, common heritage) which, together, structure a common interest. This common interest should be the basis for policies that boost America’s competitiveness and opportunities, capable as well of ensuring a sustainable and balanced distribution of wealth for people and territories.
The Autonomous Community of the Basque Country (or Euskadi) is an authentic city-region within the international context, which a population of slightly more than two million and a density of 300 inhabitants per square kilometre. The scale of Euskadi is similar to other city-regions around the world. Indeed, the metropolitan Miami is larger than Euskadi, and metropolitan Sydney has about the same physical size, but twice as many inhabitants.
The concept of “Euskal Hiria” or “Basque City Region” responds to the opportunity of seeking interrelations and complementarities among the three Basque capitals (Bilbao, San Sebastián and Vitoria), and between these and the other urban settlements in Euskadi. None of the cities that make up the Basque urban system would be able, on their own, to possess the critical mass needed to offer the set of specialised services, infrastructure, facilities and options that are offered in successful global cities. Nevertheless, within the framework of emergent city-regions, the structure of the Basque territory has some unique singularities and competitive advantages.
Through the Proyecto CITIES methodology, Fundación Metrópoli identified the “components of excellence” for each of the three capital cities as well as for Euskadi as a whole. The study was undertaken in collaboration with the University of the Basque Country and the University of Deusto, and supported by the Basque Government and the City Halls of Bilbao, San Sebastián and Vitoria.
The ‘European Diagonal’ is the concept of a mega-region emerging in the most dynamic part of Europe with Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, Marseille and Milan as its key cities. The Diagonal in the south has the potential to complement the ‘Pentagon’ in the north-west, identified in the European Spatial Planning Perspective as the only global mega-region in Europe.
‘Building the European Diagonal’ focuses on four ‘Mediterranean Diamonds’: south-western Atlantic Portugal, Mediterranean Spain, southern France and northern Italy. They are the driving forces of this mega-city network, an emerging gateway to South America, North Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This project explores strategic development options of major metropolises in the Diagonal within this evolving territorial context.
Around the great estuary of the Rio de la Plata are some of the most developed and largest urban systems of South America with a population of just over 21 million inhabitants. Main cities of Argentina and Uruguay are located within this area at a very short distance by sea and by land.
Main urban node is the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires, which with 14.3 million inhabitants is one of the great megacities of the world. Although this urban area occupies only 0.5% of the total area of Argentina, within it 35% of the country’s population lives and more than 30% of the country’s GDP is generated. With almost one million inhabitants, in the stretches of the Paraná River near the mouth the city of Rosario and Santa Fe are located, while in the southernmost part of the estuary is the Mar del Plata with almost 800,000 inhabitants. In the Uruguayan section towards the Metropolitan Area of Montevideo we must add the presence of the Maldonado-Punta del Este Urban Area. Along the lower course of the Uruguay River are the other two major cities of the country, Salto and Paysandú.
The estuary is also the natural outlet to the sea and the point of convergence of the axes of communication of a vast territory of almost 3 million km2, which covers Uruguay and almost all of northern Argentina, in addition to the entire territory of Paraguay with the Metropolitan Area of Asunción and great extensions of east Bolivia and the south of Brazil.
The Diamond of Buenos Aires is an initiative for this territory to participate with a significant role in the new international scenario of global cities through strategies supported by complementarity and synergies between the different nodes that compose it.
The Marmara Sea Diamond is an initiative presented by Fundacion Metropoli for the articulation of a global discourse about the landscapes of the Marmara Sea, alongside with a strategy to identify opportunities for Turkey.
The articulation of the Marmara Sea Dimond spells out a territory with greater capacity to respond to future global challenges of sustainability and competitiveness. Such a strategy reinforces the collective regional offering as well as the complementarities between very distinct but cooperative places. For Turkey, and for Istanbul, the Diamond will mean greater international visibility, increased ability to attract investment and innovation, and an augmented offering of high-quality services.
The main objective of the project “Almaty Bishkek Economic Corridor” is to create a vision for the future of the region and identify and design strategic projects with the capacity to accelerate innovation, economic development and competitiveness in the region through the construction of a polycentric urban system that triggers complementarity and interrelation between the main cities in Central Asia. “ABEC” is an opportunity for the regional context to lead the Central Asian Diamond, a territory with the natural capacity to become articulator between Europe and Asia. It is an economic space with great potential to grow and transform the economy of the region and its international positioning.
Murcia I+T outlines the major challenges facing the Region of Murcia in the future, and defines a proposal for a new territorial model and strategic orientations for regional planning policies. One of the most decisive projects is to consolidate the Murcia-Cartagena Axis (Territorio M@C) as a major integrated urban space. In recent years, the metropolitan area of Murcia and Cartagena grew to become the sixth-largest in Spain.
Overall, the Territorio M@C has tremendous development and regeneration potentials due to its increasing centrality on the Mediterranean coast. The development strategy of this sprawling area is to restructure the region into more concentrated polycentric networks connected by good quality public transport corridors, while protecting the orchards and preserving the green heart at the centre of the region. Efforts are made to attract a high-speed train station to both Murcia and Cartagena to boost the centrality of the region and its metropolitan areas. Another project is to create a multimodal transport interchange with an international airport, a high-speed rail station, and a logistic park, connected by motorway with Murcia, Cartagena, the Mar Menor and the rest of the coastal region.
