Metropolitan regions

Within the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, 14 administrative districts from Schleswig-Holstein and Niedersachsen cooperate with the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The basis of this cooperation is a treaty between the three federal states involved that makes co-financing funds available through a joint promotion fund for projects with the following aims:

• To boost international competitiveness, especially in the areas of business, science, transport, tourism and culture.
• To secure public services in the face of demographic change and scarce public funds.
• Joint development on questions of regional planning and land use management.

Via the Internet presentation of the metropolitan region, those looking for business locations can research the available sites in the region with the industrial and commercial site portal GEFIS. Incidentally, the KomSIS business site data for the districts from Niedersachsen involved are also integrated in GEFIS.

The federal states of Bremen and Niedersachsen and the administrative districts and self-governing cities from Germany's Northwest have organised themselves into an association together with companies and the regional chambers of industry. The metropolitan region intends to position itself as a maritime region of the future and set the course for the future with projects in the fields of industry, transport, tourism and culture, knowledge and innovation, energy, the food sector, regional marketing and European strategy. The German federal states involved have set up a promotional fund for the purpose.

Interesting services are available through the website of the metropolitan region:

• A regional monitoring tool that allows the comparison of the economic performance, innovative potential and demographic development of the regions.
• A metropolitan planner (Metropolplaner) in the form of a digital map system on the basis of the regional planning programmes of the administrative districts and the land utilisation plans of the self-governing cities and urban municipalities.

The polycentrically structured metropolitan region, which was established in 2005, is on the road from being a voluntary alliance of local government entities to becoming a joint organisation of research and scientific institutes and business companies. A new company entity will be founded in 2009. With this new organisational form, the content of work is to be focussed on the following themes: establishing a profile as a Mobility Region of global significance; energy efficiency as a field of the future; Innovative Cooperation Region – Regional Awareness; platform for the procurement of promotion funds; image-building and International Placement. The Internet presentation of the metropolitan region is currently being redesigned for the new foundation.