Impact of Polycentric Urban Systems on Intra-regional Disparities: A Micro-regional Approach

From the normative perspective of EU regional policy, polycentric spatial development has been seen as an effective tool to overcome regional disparities since the adoption of the European Spatial Development Perspective. However, the impact of a polycentric spatial structure on equal spatial development is ambiguous and still waits for its clarification. This paper examines the relationship by focusing on the local scale, where medium-sized towns play a crucial role as local centres in everyday human lives. Using functional regions of the Czech Republic, this paper defines polycentric urban systems at the micro-regional scale. Subsequently, the level of mono/polycentricity is compared with intra-regional disparities. Based on the results of the analysis, it can be argued that the connection of polycentricity with balanced spatial development is strongly determined by selected indicators. However, the findings do not provide evidence about the strictly positive impact of polycentricity on intra-regional disparities. In a light of these results, the conclusion is rather sceptical about the unique role of polycentricity in spatial development and due to the lack of similar studies, further research is recommended.     

Polycentricity – one concept or many?

This paper aims to discuss polycentrism and its implications. Polycentricity plays a key role in EU Cohesion Policy and has done so since 1999 when the notion was included in the European Spatial Development Perspective. Politically, it emerged as a key tool because of its ability to fuse together the two primary and conflicting perceptions of spatial–economic development, cohesion and competitiveness. No agreed definition of polycentricity exists. Furthermore, different actors and disciplines define polycentrism differently. The absence of a concise and coherent definition makes it difficult to measure polycentricity. Moreover, several studies have concluded that it is difficult to identify empirical evidence to support the positive claims made in its name. Polycentrism is assumed toolbox to reduce regional disparities, but polycentric countries display higher regional disparities than monocentric countries. Polycentric countries do not perform better than monocentric countries with regard to competitiveness and GDP/cap. As such, this paper concludes that not only does the political meaning of polycentricity struggle over aims with the inherit dichotomy at its heart, it also struggles in terms of basic credibility.     

Regional polycentricity: an indicator framework for assessing cohesion impacts of railway infrastructures

Territorial cohesion has become one of the main objectives in transport planning. This has fostered the development of assessment methodologies to quantitatively estimate the territorial impact of major transport infrastructures, which are particularly scarce at the intra-regional level. Linked to cohesion, polycentricity has been defined as the best spatial configuration to achieve balanced regions where population and opportunities are distributed among several entities linked by functional relationships. This paper aims to present a methodology to estimate these impacts based on the use of a new regional composite polycentricity indicator. The proposed indicator is tested by comparing the effects of conventional and high-speed railway (HSR) alternatives in the territorial system of a northern region of Spain. This quantitative assessment is a ranking tool for prioritizing rail network alternatives in terms of achieving the most balanced territory, which is especially relevant in countries where HSR networks follow cohesion goals. Our results show that new HSR links should only be complementary to regional railway services, and that the suppression of secondary lines should be avoided if a reduction in polarization is to be achieved.     

Measuring Relative Sustainability of Regions Using Regional Sustainability Assessment Methodology

Scientists analyze sustainability at the regional level with a combination of multiple indicators which reflect different characteristics of regions without combining the results in a single comparative unit. Moreover, the assessment of interdependencies between different characteristics requires experts' analyses, which makes sustainability analysis subjective, time consuming, and limited in use. This article analyzes the relative sustainability of subnational level regions through the application of regional sustainability assessment methodology (RSAM) based on accounting of resources capital and its internal and external transfers. This approach allows for assessment of regional sustainability as a function of resource quantity, quality, and interchangeability. The comparison of the two case study regions presented in the paper indicates the difference between a more sustainable region and a region of “weak sustainability.” First, the article indicates the discussion of the relevant geographic, economic, and social literature for both sustainability assessment and regional comparison. This discussion is followed by a conceptual representation of proposed RSAM and its application to various regions. Next, the article covers the data used and applied methods to test the proposed methodology and compare the two case study regions. The article concludes with a discussion of findings and recommendations for further application and testing.     

Tourism and Sustainable Development on the Isle of Eigg,Scotland

Although the concept of sustainability has long permeated the literature on tourism and its development, the research on sustainability in tourism rarely reaches beyond the industry level to examine how tourism contributes to the sustainable development of a given destination in wider terms and how effective such processes can be in different economic, environmental and socio-cultural settings. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this important, yet under-developed, research agenda. The paper focuses on the Isle of Eigg – a remote community-owned Scottish island that has recently committed itself to becoming more sustainable and that seeks to rely on inbound tourism as the most important means to this end. It is demonstrated that tourism plays a key role in enhancing the economic stature of Eigg residents and that, rather than undermining, it strengthens the community cohesion on the island. Despite this, its contribution to the island's environmental sustainability cannot always be taken for granted and some trade-offs between these three kinds of sustainability cannot therefore be avoided. Moreover, economic sustainability on Eigg should not be considered synonymous with economic self-sufficiency.     

Defining Functional Polycentricity From a Geographical Perspective

Despite the prevalence of polycentricity as a normative strategy in planning documents, a lengthy and inconclusive debate regarding its definition in academic research persists. The aim of this article is to eliminate the conceptual confusion surrounding functional polycentricity from a geographical perspective. By classifying different approaches to polycentricity, we outline the properties that characterize all forms of functional polycentricity. Accordingly, we redefine functional polycentricity and propose a corresponding framework with which to measure it. The commuting and leisure functional polycentricity of Atlanta is used as an example to illustrate the application of this framework.     

Measuring Polycentricity and its Promises

Even a decade after the concept of polycentric development became popular and increasingly widespread in Europe as a normative policy stance allegedly leading to cohesion and competitiveness, its empirical basis is still rather weak. This is partly due to a lack of conceptual clearness, which makes its measurement difficult. This research briefing synthesises the results of two recent ESPON projects that aim to create a quantitative measurement of the extent of polycentricity of national urban systems, as well as the links they find between polycentricity and economic and social objectives. Both approaches have their limits and have been, and can be criticized from various perspectives. Some suggestions on how to proceed with this research agenda are presented.     

Regional and transnational spatial planning1: problems today,perspectives for the future

This introductory contribution presents some results of the EURBANET project, dealing with European urban networks in the framework of the INTERREG IIC programme of the North‐western Metropolitan Area (NWMA). This project was conducted between 2000 and 2001 by researchers of Delft University of Technology, the University of Glasgow, the University of Dortmund, the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Nijmegen. The central objective of the EURBANET project was to explore the role of polynucleated urban regions in the reinforcement of the competitive strength and quality of life in the NWMA, as a contribution to transnational spatial planning in the NWMA. Four polynuclear urban regions are involved: Randstad Holland, the Flemish Diamond, the RheinRuhr Area and Central Scotland (Glasgow‐Edinburgh region). One of the conclusions is that it is necessary to move between scales: from the European Union to national spatial policies (and vice versa), between national policies and regional spatial policies and between regional and urban spatial policies. At each scale, specific demands for spatial planning policies in polynuclear urban regions are becoming increasingly relevant. This is a challenge for spatial policies and policy domains like infrastructure policy, transport policy, housing policy, economic and environmental policy. We present an analysis of how polycentricity has become central to recent discussions on European and north‐west European spatial and economic planning. We launch a spatial network approach to integrate spatial policies. These wide perspectives contrast heavily with the current less satisfactory practice of spatial planning on the level of urban networks and transnational governance.     

宁夏南部回族社区人地关系及可持续发展研究

本文运用区域可持续发展基本理论,全面分析了宁夏南部回族社区人地关系由掠夺式向互为报复式演进的过程、原由及危害,剖析了回族社区可持续发展的四大制约因子,即:生活贫困及生产方式的落后性,人类自身生产及人口素质的低层次性,区域文化的封闭性,生态环境的逆展性。并针对上述因子,提出了改善人地关系,实现可持续发展的举措是:加快区域经济建设,深化生态环境建设,加强地域文化建设,积极进行社区建设。     

Cultural sustainability as a strategy for the survival of museums and libraries

Cultural sustainability has become a growing priority within sustainable development agendas, and is now often depicted as a fourth pillar, equal to social, economic, and environmental concerns. Museums and libraries play a unique role within cultural sustainability by preserving their communities’ heritage. However, sustainability policy and research within these sectors still tends to focus on the social, economic, and environmental pillars. This article provides a critique of sustainability policy and research for museums and libraries. It argues that more explicit coverage of cultural sustainability is required to not only improve the contributions of museums and libraries to cultural sustainability, but also to provide an increased understanding and appreciation of the value of these institutions necessary for their continued survival.     

Polycentric Transformation in Kenyan Water Governance: A Dynamic Analysis of Institutional and Social‐Ecological Change

Beginning in 2002, Kenyan water governance transitioned from a monocentric, top‐down system to one exhibiting traits of polycentricity. In this paper, we investigate the changes made to water policy following the 2002 reform, outcomes produced in a collection of community‐ and catchment‐level user groups in the Mount Kenya region, and the conformance of these changes and outcomes with principles of polycentricity. A new framework is used to capture the complex institutional arrangements and interactions existing before and after the polycentric transformation. Unlike many previous polycentricity studies, the present research focuses primarily on the outcomes of the polycentric shift and determines if these correspond to predictions from polycentricity theory. We utilize survey data collected in 2013 from water managers, as well as archival research to interrogate congruence with principles of polycentricity. This study contributes to the broader discussion on polycentricity in two fundamental ways: (i) It documents the functioning of a water management system following a top‐down imposed polycentric reform, and (ii) It empirically inspects whether these polycentric reforms have produced benefits predicted by polycentricity theorists, such as experimentation by local water users, increased collective action, and improved coordination between levels of management.     

WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD: HOW CAN REGIONAL SCIENCE CONTRIBUTE TO THE STUDY OF NEIGHBORHOODS?*

ABSTRACT We argue in this paper that neighborhoods are highly relevant for the types of issues at the heart of regional science. First, residential and economic activity takes place in particular locations, and particular neighborhoods. Many attributes of those neighborhood environments matter for this activity, from the physical amenities, to the quality of the public and private services received. Second, those neighborhoods vary in their placement in the larger region and this broader arrangement of neighborhoods is particularly important for location choices, commuting behavior and travel patterns. Third, sorting across these neighborhoods by race and income may well matter for educational and labor market outcomes, important components of a region's overall economic activity. For each of these areas we suggest a series of unanswered questions that would benefit from more attention. Focused on neighborhood characteristics themselves, there are important gaps in our understanding of how neighborhoods change – the causes and the consequences. In terms of the overall pattern of neighborhoods and resulting commuting patterns, this connects directly to current concerns about environmental sustainability and there is much need for research relevant to policy makers. And in terms of segregation and sorting across neighborhoods, work is needed on better spatial measures. In addition, housing market causes and consequences for local economic activity are under researched. We expand on each of these, finishing with some suggestions on how newly available data, with improved spatial identifiers, may enable regional scientists to answer some of these research questions.     

English Regionalization and Sustainability: Towards the Development of an Integrated Approach to Strategic Environmental Assessment

Central to this article is the suggestion that modern planning and development frameworks in England are currently at a potentially productive, although problematic turning point. Whilst on the one hand the UK is attempting to make the legislative and institutional changes necessary to facilitate the process of regionalization and devolution, it is at the same time facing the challenge of ensuring the necessary levels of inter-agency cohesion and integration required for the delivery of the meta-objectives at the heart of sustainable development. Of particular concern for the English regions is the increasing complexity of organizational relations, the fragmentary nature of provisions, the potential mismatch between the need to preserve environmental welfare and at the same time ensure regional economic competitiveness, and more fundamentally, the failure to provide an appropriate mechanism for the evaluation of sustainable development goals. In the light of these challenges, the authors highlight the value of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) as a mechanism for improving the environmental quality of decision-making and make recommendations as to how the regional level of decision-making can provide an effective platform for the development of an SEA system which is capable of reconciling the sustainability conflicts derived from different tiers of decision-making. Within this discussion, suggestions are made as to the manner in which current ideas for introducing sustainability appraisal for Regional Planning Guidance should be amended.     

Environmental science, sustainability and politics

Research evidence and pleas that humans are undermining their own survival on a robust and unforgiving planet seem to be falling on deaf ears. The drive for economic and military security remains more powerful than the evidence that both of these objectives are being undermined by environmental damage, social disruption, unjust treatment and forced migration. Yet the signs are growing that environmentally and socially sound futures may be vital prerequisites for economic and military stability. So, at the heart of multi-nationalism, sustainable development is beginning to be recognized as a crucial element in reliable international agreements. The consequence of all this is that environmental science has become highly political, and geographers need to recognize and work within an expanding political process. Examples of new forms of governing via sustainability science for sustainable futures are offered in the latter part of the paper, especially at local government level. The antagonistic pressures of established power and economic hegemony are never far away. Indeed, the confirmation of these established patterns of power still pervades the politics of environmental science. But it is possible that these antagonistic political frameworks are beginning to be transcended by the more influential aspects of sustainability partnerships incorporating new arrangements between government, private capital and civil associations. These partnerships will not be easy to create, for they criss-cross boundaries of familiarity and rules of operation. But geographers can play a critical role in helping to shape them and assess the best circumstances for ensuring their success.     

The Impact of Local Environmental Advocacy Groups on City Sustainability Policies and Programs

American cities vary considerably in the degree to which they pursue sustainability. What explains this variation? One plausible cause of such differences is that sustainability may be more appealing to high‐income cities than to more economically challenged cities. Yet such strict economic determinism seems simplistic and removes politics from an inherently political process. The hypothesis here is that any such relationship between income and commitment to sustainability is conditioned by a city's level of environmental advocacy. The data utilized in this analysis are derived from two large‐scale data sources. One is a comprehensive inventory of sustainability programs and policies in 50 large American cities. The other is a set of surveys in those same 50 cities. The multivariate model supports the hypothesis. Controlling for income growth and the predisposition of policymakers to be supportive of sustainability (as well as other alternative explanations), a city's commitment to sustainability is strongly linked to the advocacy of environmental and sustainability groups in the policymaking process. The example of Sustainable Seattle is used to illustrate the linkages that would seem to underlie the statistical analysis.     

Selective border permeability: Governing complex environmental issues through and beyond COVID-19

COVID-19 has changed the permeability of borders in transboundary environmental governance regimes. While borders have always been selectively permeable, the pandemic has reconfigured the nature of cross-border flows of people, natural resources, finances and technologies. This has altered the availability of spaces for enacting sustainability initiatives within and between countries. In Southeast Asia, national governments and businesses seeking to expedite economic recovery from the pandemic-induced recession have selectively re-opened borders by accelerating production and revitalizing agro-export growth. Widening regional inequities have also contributed to increased cross-border flows of illicit commodities, such as trafficked wildlife. At the same time, border restrictions under the exigencies of controlling the pandemic have led to a rolling back and scaling down of transboundary environmental agreements, regulations and programs, with important implications for environmental democracy, socio-ecological justice and sustainability. Drawing on evidence from Southeast Asia, the article assesses the policy challenges and opportunities posed by the shifting permeability of borders for organising and operationalising environmental activities at different scales of transboundary governance.     

论城市竞争力及评价方法和程序

本文对国内外"竞争力"辨析的基础上,探讨了城市竞争力的概念。其结论是:城市竞争力是指一定竞争环境中,一个城市在发展过程中所具有的吸引、争夺、拥有、控制和转化资源,以创造价值或财富,提高居民生活水平和城市可持续发展的能力。在城市竞争力概念和城市竞争力影响因素的"环境学派"、"资源学派"和"能力学派"基础上,本文分析了城市竞争力的一般评价方法:区域经济学方法、基准法和SWOT方法。最后总结了城市竞争力评价的一般程序。     

Connecting Municipal and Regional Level Planning: Analysis and Visualization of Sustainability Indicators in Bergslagen,Sweden

Sustainable development as a process towards sustainability requires collaboration among societal actors and stakeholders at multiple levels. A key issue is to provide them with that they have comprehensive and transparent knowledge base representing the state and trends of different dimensions of sustainability. This study addresses the need to analyse and present data of sustainability as a foundation for the sustainable development process within municipalities, and among them. As a case study, we focus on 18 municipalities in the crisis-struck Bergslagen region in Sweden and compare them with 101 surrounding municipalities. Data from 2001 and 2006 on 15 indicators representing ecological, economic and social sustainability criteria were transformed to a common scale through normalization around the median, and summarized. Bergslagen region municipalities performed poorer than the surrounding ones for all dimensions in 2006. The change from 2001 to 2006 was positive for economic and social criteria, while the ecological dimension developed negatively in all municipalities. We stress the need for municipalities to collaborate with each other and other actors both at municipal and regional levels, and to use sustainability indicators as a base for informed planning processes. We propose visualization of indicators using maps to support decision-making and social learning.     

Tiwanaku and Its Precursors: Recent Research and Emerging Perspectives

The Lake Titicaca Basin provides a fascinating case study for examining the prehistoric rise of complexity and archaic state development. The development of the Tiwanaku state and preceding polities involved conjunctions of regional environmental, socioeconomic, and ideological transformations. Significant social, economic, and ideological diversity characterized each major phase, indicating that the creation of inclusive domains of shared values, practices, and identities was critical to the formation of polities in the region. Tiwanaku and its precursors were, in great part, incorporative sociopolitical phenomena in which social diversity remained vital throughout their histories.     

Linking polycentricity concepts to periphery: implications for an integrative Austrian strategic spatial planning practice

This contribution searches for a regional planning conception that allows for a mutual recognition and practical translation between strategies for urban regions and peripheries beyond separate urban and rural categories; taking the Austrian strategic spatial planning context as the example. For this, various notions of polycentricity are discussed and assessed with regard to periphery. The Austrian strategic spatial development concept ÖREK sets out a focused work programme with changing responsibilities and participation of actors. The objectives are targeted and the processes are implementation oriented. Amongst other topics, urban regional issues and peripheral, declining regions are worked on separately. A conceptually integrative, plan-like strategic instrument across the topics and for the whole of Austria is lacking. The ESPON notion of ‘inner peripheries’ is proposed as a complementary concept to the ESDP notion of polycentricity, helping to create a bridge between urban regional and periphery strategies. This has the potential to guide strategic planning practice efforts in Austria towards a yet missing strategic spatial plan for the whole of the country beyond urban and rural categories. Practice relevant conclusions related to the case of Austrian strategic spatial planning are drawn and a need for further, comparative research in a European context is identified.