The ESPON conducts comprehensive spatial observations to generate studies about spatial developments. Targeted analysis projects like SPIMA aim to capture and provide perspectives of European policies to national development policy levels. Besides Prague the cities of Oslo, Brussels, Lille, Lyon, Zürich, Brno, Vienna, Terrassa and Torino participate in the SPIMA project.

The main topic of the examination is about how spatial development in metropolitan areas is working. It needs to be examined how the collaborative work in multi-level governance in metropolitan regions and how arrangements and agreements between the participating stakeholders can be done. Therefore in this project, information about the current state of spatial planning and policies in metropolitan areas are collected and strategies and methods which support the practices at the metropolitan scale are identified.

As an outcome there should be recommendations for successful implementation of metropolitan development and policy. For this examination the researcher Iván Tosics from the Metropolitan Research Institute from Budapest will lead among others expert interviews in the beginning of February in Prague.