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In order to become engines of development, large cities require modernization in the area of urban governance. The first part of the article focuses on theoretical concepts of governance and territorial governance, including the instruments that promote good governance, such as the fight against corruption, and its measurement indicators. The second part of the article deals with governance in metropolitan areas, describing several metropolitan bodies of governance, specialised in spatial planning and transportation, discussing the need of coordination and the collaborative approach as a premise for ensuring better transport accessibility and more harmonized spatial plans. Finally, the article presents solutions and recommendations for an efficient reform of metropolitan governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an overall view of the first cities of the world which are considered to be the origin of urbanization, as they are reflected in historical bird's-eye views and maps, on one hand, and in aerial views, obtained using modern technologies such as aerial photogrammetry, on the other hand. Historical bird's-eye views of ancient cities, having a more artistic style rather than a technical one and requiring thousands of hours to be created, have been replaced nowadays with aerial photography allowing realistic representations. The paper illustrates several bird's-eye views and maps created between the 16th and 18th centuries by famous engravers in order to picture well-known cities, referring at the same time to modern digital techniques that are used today to map, visualise, analyse and manage remains of ancient cities. The use of new research methods in archaeology, such as aerial photogrammetry, high resolution satellite imagery, UAVs, GIS and GPS techniques combined with classical surface or sub-surface survey tools is being exemplified in the case of 5 cities, origin of urbanization, constituted in the first 4 millenniums BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of a Centre of Excellence specialized in land management, mapping and cadastre is expected to promote synergies between science and technology based on the use of advanced information and communication technologies. CENTRIC will act as a knowledge transfer and innovation hub for multiple national and international networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]