ReFrameCity develops a regional and relational framework for understanding the metabolism of interconnected cities. It responds to the fact that urban resource systems rarely stop at municipal boundaries: smaller cities, metropolitan centres, infrastructures and productive territories depend on one another through energy, material, mobility, waste and service networks.

The foundational review examines seventy-four peer-reviewed studies and distinguishes several ways of representing interurban relationships, including metabolic capacity, resource requirements and urban characteristics. It also differentiates integrated, networked and combined analytical approaches. From this evidence, the project proposes the idea of an interconnected urban matrix and calls for stronger spatial analysis of the infrastructures and territories through which cities exchange resources and environmental burdens.

ReFrameCity broadens urban metabolism from the single-city scale to functional urban regions. Supported by the University of Louvain’s special research funds, it offers a basis for comparing the dependencies of smaller and larger cities and for identifying transition strategies that would be invisible within administrative boundaries. The work also feeds the wider Metabolic Geographies research cluster.