Rolf-Barnim Foth, METREX Working Group on metropolitan-rural relations - Ministry of Economy, Transport and Innovation Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg , 2011
Many metropolitan areas and regions include vast rural areas. Within these functional regions, the urban and the rural areas cooperate very closely and can be regarded as cohesive systems. In Metropolitan Regions, urban and rural relations of this kind are of major importance, nevertheless often very complex and challenging. Cooperation also offers new opportunities to work together, for example, in the fields of traffic and transport, new technologies and business, food and nutrition, climate change, energy supply or tourism. Therefore urban, and especially rural regions, must know where their strengths lie in order to be able to achieve best results and mutual benefit. There are a lot of very good and interesting best practice examples in this publication from different European metropolitan areas. Please use this booklet as a source of inspiration and give support to new approaches to cohesion politics.
