The purpose of the metropolis is to maintain a strong urban and industrially developed area with internationally competitive profile and unified management of all infrastructure.

[5][6] By law, it is obligated to carry out tasks in the areas of spatial order, socioeconomic development, public transport planning, and promotion.

[9] Metropolis GZM was created in June 2017 act of Parliament, with its boundaries defined by a regulation of Poland's Council of Ministers.

[10][7] It effectively replaced the earlier existing Metropolitan Association of Upper Silesia (Polish: Górnośląski Związek Metropolitalny), which was discontinued at the end od 2017.

[11] That original union was formed ten years earlier in Świętochłowice by 14 core cities of Katowice urban area.

[15] The Metropolis GZM spans urban and suburban communities in the historical regions of Upper Silesia (the South-Eastern part of Silesia) as well as Lesser Poland's Zagłębie Dąbrowskie in the modern Silesian Voivodeship in southern Poland, within the northern portion of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin between the Vistula and Oder rivers.

Other major cities to which the metropolis is directly connected to by trains include Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Bratislava.

Other major cities with connections to Katowice Airport include London, Dubai, Amsterdam, Milan, Dublin, Rome, Barcelona, Lisbon, Stockholm, Athens, Kyiv and Tel Aviv.

Original union included only the 14 cities with powiat rights that form the urban core of the metropolitan area: (Bytom, Chorzów, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Gliwice, Jaworzno, Katowice, Mysłowice, Piekary Śląskie, Ruda Śląska, Siemianowice Śląskie, Sosnowiec, Świętochłowice, Tychy, and Zabrze.

Jaworzno, which was the founding member of the original union, decided to not to join the new body, citing an unwillingness to merge its public transportation subsidiary company with the metropolitan one as the main reason.

This name was used on the official petition to create a metropolis, and later was used by the Polish Ministry of Interior in the final legal act published on 30 June 2017.

Previous name proposals included: Pursuant to the law, the Metropolis receives 5% of the PIT from persons residing in its territory.