METROPOLIS’ General Secretariat is conducting the Research Project on Metropolitan Regions and it follows the objective to identify the institutional organisation and forms of government of the world’s major metropolitan regions. The focus of the project is depict concisely each of the territorial dimensions of the metropolises, but preserving comparability across the different metropolitan regions.

As an ongoing project, the aim of the research is to gradually study all the 400 metropolitan regions larger than 1 million inhabitants -according to United Nations data- paying attention first to METROPOLIS’ member cities. Until 2005, the research has covered up to 55 metropolises: the 25 largest metropolitan regions together with a globally balanced selection of 30 metropolitan regions. Each of them has been provided with a downloadable profile