Proceedings of the IV World Planning Schools Congress, July 3-8th, 2016 : Global crisis, planning and challenges to spatial justice in the north and in the south ; In Flanders (Belgium), the regional government engages itself to develop an efficient ‘metropolis Flanders’, which is large enough to assume an important economic position in the network of urban regions of the north-western European delta. The heart of this urban agglomeration is the metropolitan core area that comprises roughly the functional space of the quadrangle Brussels-Leuven-Antwerp-Ghent, also known as the ‘Flemish Diamond’ (Albrechts & Lievois, 2004). This densely populated core area is well accessible and embedded in the European context, but experiences a variety of pressures. For example, a large portion of the predicted population growth of Flanders and Brussels is expected to settle in this area. As a consequence, the development of a ‘metropolis Flanders’ should be based on solid strategic planning policies. The current paper reports on a research project (Van Meeteren et al., 2015), aimed at determining whether the defined metropolitan area operates as a well-integrated urban agglomeration, and at developing a spatial vision on strengthening this metropolitan core area through a stakeholder debate. We make this analysis respectively with regards to the labour market, the housing market, and the transport sector (with the emphasis on public transport). The study is positioned within the guidelines as set out by the Green Paper on Spatial Policy in Flanders (Flemish Government, 2012), meaning that the emphasis will be put on the ability to support a spatial visioning process, rather than aiming for an exhaustive spatial analysis. The exercise is carried out in a complex institutional context. Boussauw et al. (2013) indicate that the central-Belgian metropolitan area spreads out across three administrative regions (Flanders, Brussels Capital Region, and Wallonia), with the Dutch-French language border as a very strong barrier within ...