City branding in polycentric urban regions: identification,profiling and transformation in the Randstad and Rhine-Ruhr

In polycentric urban regions several distinct cities, none of which is dominant, cooperate and compete with each other to attract inhabitants and firms. In such settings city branding strategies do not solely affect one city, but the entire region. We examined how city branding in the face of ecological modernization, that is, delivering higher added economic value, while lowering environmental impacts, is playing out in the Dutch Randstad and the German Rhine-Ruhr. Our findings show that regional identity formation occurs at the sub-polycentric urban region level, coinciding more with (historical) economic profiles than with planning imaginaries. The Dutch cities profile themselves more along the lines of ecological modernization than their German counterparts. Differences between subregions within each polycentric urban region are also noticeable, where more industrialized regions, such as the Ruhr or southern Randstad focus on ‘green’, ‘liveable’ and ‘knowledge-oriented’, while cities with stronger knowledge-intensive sectors portray themselves as ‘smart’ or ‘sustainable’. Cities generally substantiate their profiles through projects, but a significant gap persists between reality and aspirations for improved environmental conditions. This is especially true for the Dutch cities, where many claims, but little visible action can be observed.     

Contrasts between first-tier and second-tier cities in Europe: a functional perspective

Second-tier cities have been experiencing renewed interest within policy and research contexts, which is reversing a tradition of relative neglect due to the long-standing focus on large cities and capitals. This paper compares European second-tier and first-tier cities with regard to the presence of urban functions and how these are spread over their urban regions. The analysis shows the existence of a substantial ‘first city bonus’: a surplus of urban functions in first-tier cities which cannot be explained by their size or network embeddedness. We also show that second-tier cities are better served with urban functions in the absence of a dominant capital. In first-tier urban regions, the core municipality exploits the critical mass of the urban region to support its own functions, leaving that region functionally underserved. Second-tier cities lack this absorptive capacity, and their urban regions are endowed with more urban functions. These functional differences mean that second-tier cities demand a differentiated research and policy approach, in which city-regional integration becomes an important territorial development strategy. Rather than the dispersion process in first-tier cities leading to a ‘regionalization of the city’, integration in second-tier urban regions may be seen as a process of ‘citification of the region’.     

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.