Metropolregion Rhein-Neckar

This network concept has experienced a marked impetus in recent years. The trend toward a knowledge and information society, globalisation, regionalisation and limited public financial resources requires a growing preparedness of interest groups to co-operate in both a spatial as well as a functional regard. Against this background, strategic networks are attributed a high expertise in solving problems. And flexibility and a capacity for adaptability and innovation are an essential prerequisite for regional development in particular.

For this reason, networks have always played a leading role in the history of the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region and consequently made a significant contribution to establishing today's regional development structures. A prime goal of the network activities around the Rhine and the Neckar is to consolidate awareness for regional action. The roots of these efforts in the Rhine-Neckar region reach back to the 1950s. The "Rhine-Neckar Communal Working Group", involving the towns of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Heidelberg and Viernheim together with the Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg administrative districts, was founded as long ago as 1951. Its purpose was to provide a framework for joint planning in all areas of common interest to the group's members, in particular with regard to transport, energy supply, spatial planning, industrial and residential settlements, culture, etc.

This far-reaching commitment to trans-state and cross-theme co-operation peaked in 1969 in the first state treaty signed by Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate. This formed the basis for enabling the regional protagonists to increasingly intensify and expand their involvement. The logical consequence of these efforts was the significant expansion of the region's scope of action following its recognition as a "European Metropolitan Region" in 2005 and the renewal of the state treaty. To exploit this scope, and in doing so to realise the "Vision 2025", is the declared aim of the regional development work in the years to come.

Around 30 established networks in the MRN are listed here. These are networks that either collaborate with bodies in the metropolitan region on their own initiative or which are integrated by them in the communal regional development activities.