JOINING FORCES is an Urbact Working Group that brings together 8 partners: Brno, Brussels-Capital Region, Burgas, Eindhoven, Florence, Krakow, Lille Metropole, and Seville.

All over Europe, metropolitan areas / city-regions are increasingly recognised, even by local authorities, as the "real city" level, the right one for developing more effective governance and strategy developments. Achieving successful cooperation between cities and their surrounding areas is obviously crucial to improve local cohesion, but even more to increase territorial competitiveness and sustainability.

The project aims at describing and analysing partners' situations in order to propose conclusions and suitable recommendations to the local / regional / national / European authorities on governance at city-region level. This theme will be considered through different aspects: 

• Strategy and spatial planning
• Mobility management and transport
• Main environmental issues: water supply, waste disposal, etc.
• Knowledge economy (creativity, research and education)
• Governance (public / public & public / private arrangements
• Social inclusion, participation, empowerment
• Attractiveness & Competitiveness (including promotion / marketing)