Cartographying the real metropolis: A proposal for a databased planning beyond the administrative boundaries

Nowadays, there is a great gap between the functional reality of urban agglomerations and their planning, largely because of the traditional linkage of urban management to the administrative limits inherited from the past. It is also true that the regulation of urban activities, including census and statistical information, requires a closer view of its citizens that can only be addressed from the municipal level. In any case, it is clear that the metropolitan delimitation has met useful but often ethereal or exclusionary criteria (economic or labor patterns, functional areas...), which become disfigured by an administrative reality that does not always correspond to the real metropolis. This paper, aware of the new cartographic possibilities linked to the big data - CORINE Land Cover, SIOSE, multi-sector digital atlases (in many cases referred to the urban extent, etc.) and other open system platforms - explores the evidence that might base a new objective methodology for the delimitation and planning of large urban areas. Indeed, what if basic data for cities would arise not from administrative entities but from independent outside approaches such as satellite imagery? What if every single sensing unit (every citizen, company, building or vehicle) directly issued relevant and dynamic information without going through the municipal collection? Finally, the research analyzes the eventual implications of this databased planning with administrative structures and urban planni