Metropolitan research requires multidisciplinary perspectives in order to do justice to the complexities of metropolitan regions. This volume provides a scholarly and accessible overview of key methods and approaches in metropolitan research from a uniquely broad range of disciplines including architectural history, art history, heritage conservation, literary and cultural studies, spatial planning and planning theory, geoinformatics, urban sociology, economic geography, operations research, technology studies, transport planning, aquatic ecosystems research and urban epidemiology. It is this scope of disciplinary – and increasingly also interdisciplinary – approaches that allows metropolitan research to address recent societal challenges of urban life, such as mobility, health, diversity or sustainability.

Jens Martin Gurr, born in 1974, is a professor of British and Anglophone Literature and Culture at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is co-founder and speaker of the Competence Field Metropolitan Research in the Universitätsallianz Ruhr (KoMet). His research areas include literary urban studies, theories and methods of urban and metropolitan research, model theory, literature and climate change as well as British literature of the 17th to the 21st centuries and contemporary US fiction.
Rolf Parr is professor emeritus of German literature and media studies at the Universität Duisburg-Essen.
Dennis Hardt (Dipl.-Geogr.), born in 1984, is an urban geographer and regional planner in the Department of Regional Development at Regionalverband Ruhr. Before, he was coordinator of the Competence Field Metropolitan Research in the University Alliance Ruhr (KoMet) and researcher in the Department of Spatial Planning and Planning Theory at Technische Universität Dortmund. His research areas include strategic planning, regional and metropolitan governance, housing and spatial analysis.