Metabolic Geographies of Smaller and Interconnected Cities is an umbrella research cluster examining how city size, regional position and interurban relations shape patterns of resource use. It moves beyond the metropolitan bias of much urban-metabolism research and treats smaller cities as distinctive sites of transition rather than reduced versions of large urban centres.

The cluster brings together three complementary lines of inquiry. ReFrameCity develops a relational framework for interconnected cities; the explainable-AI strand identifies metabolic clusters among Belgian cities; and comparative work on smaller cities investigates how electricity use, urbanisation, mobility, waste systems and neighbouring territories interact. Recent analysis of Polish urban and suburban areas combines spatial autocorrelation, local indicators of spatial association and spatial regression to reveal geographically differentiated energy-consumption relationships.

Taken together, these studies support transition strategies tailored to regional context. They show why policies based solely on population size or administrative boundaries may overlook shared infrastructures, spillovers and clustered vulnerabilities. The cluster therefore connects industrial-ecology evidence with regional planning and spatial policy.