Cities, Towns and Market Towns in the Context of the Regional Disparities of the Kingdom of Hungary around 1500

The imbalance of regional development has become a major strategic issue that needs to be resolved urgently during the decisive stage in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Raising total factor productivity is the key in the stage of economic high-quality development. However, implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and replacing old growth drivers with new ones will intensify the spatial imbalance of total factor productivity (TFP), which will bring new pressures and challenges to the coordinated regional development in the new era. It is urgent to reveal the relationship between TFP and regional economic disparity, and answer the question whether the TFP has become the determinant of regional economic disparity in China. These factors determine not only whether TFP can become the key driver to narrow the regional economic disparity and achieve the coordinated regional development, but also whether the supply-side structural reform and the coordinated regional development could integrate deeply. This paper applies the relational data paradigm to regional economic disparity for the first time. Based on China’s provincial data from 2001 to 2015, we explore the relationship between TFP and the regional economic disparity in China by using the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP). According to QAP-based correlation analysis, there is a significant positive correlation between TFP and regional economic disparity, but compared with other factors, the relationship between them is the least intimate. Based on the full, sub-period and year-by-year sample QAP-based regression analysis shows that whether considering the control variables or not, TFP has a positive impact on the regional economic disparity. Although the impact of TFP on regional economic disparity is increasing, it has not become the determinant of China’s regional economic disparity. The capital accumulation and urbanization play major roles in China’s regional economic disparity. The robustness test which the capital stock accounting based on different capital depreciation rates shows that the conclusions of this paper are robust. The enlightenment of this paper is that in the process of implementing the coordinated regional development strategy, we must pay particularly attention to exert the sufficient effect of the balanced allocation of capital elements and the balanced development of urbanization in order to narrow the regional economic disparity. Meanwhile, in the process of furthering supply-side structural reform, we must actively promote the spatial balanced development of new drivers and make TFP become a new driving force of the coordinated regional development in the new era. The marginal academic contribution of this paper is that we apply the relational data paradigm in the study of regional disparity for the first time. It provides a new paradigm for exploring the causes of regional economic disparity and some new empirical evidence to reveal the impact of TFP on regional economic disparity. As the disparity between any two regions is essentially a kind of relationship, it creates the conditions for exploring regional disparities from the angle of relational data. This paper also provides a new perspective for the study of regional disparity in a broader sense.

Although the birthrate of Niigata Prefecture is relatively high compared to other regions in Japan, the aging problem is still advanced due to the outflow of younger people from the region. Nevertheless, the social mobility of the population can be explained by Tiebout's “voting with one's feet”, meaning that people migrate to a municipality where their preferences for living can be well-satisfied. In other words, regional planning is required to accord the preferences of residents relative to both their current and future residence. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the residents' consciousness about urban development and urban functions by using piece vote data obtained from the questionnaire survey executed by Niigata City Government. It focuses on the difference of residents' consciousness among and within generations. The following conclusions were made. First, the urban functions and the size of the city affect resident's preference for their current residence. The urban functions are strengthened by urban development, and the size of the city is controlled by urban development. Second, the direction is determined by city planning, and preference for the present residence influences the planning and the preferences of future residents. Finally, it is necessary to consider that the residents' consciousness is not determined by age but by life stage, not by occupation but by economic activity, not by sex but by gender, and not by the residential area but by scope of activity and location. Therefore, when implementing city planning, specifying the key factors for consensus building in the region that is behind the attributes becomes critical important.JEL Classification: H41, O21

Research that connects the effects of urbanization on biodiversity and ecosystem services is lacking. Ants perform multifarious ecological functions that stabilize ecosystems and contribute to a number of ecosystem services. We studied responses of ant communities to urbanization in the Lake Tahoe basin by sampling sites along a gradient of urban land development. We sampled ant communities, measured vegetation characteristics, quantified human activities, and evaluated ant-community responses by grouping ants into service-providing units (SPUs), defined as a group of organisms and their populations that perform specific ecosystem services, to provide an understanding of urbanization impacts on biodiversity and their delivery of ecosystem services. Species richness and abundance peaked at intermediate levels of urban development, as did the richness of 3 types of ant SPUs (aerators, decomposers, and compilers). With increasing land development aerator and decomposer ants significantly declined in abundance, whereas compiler ants significantly increased in abundance. Competing models demonstrated that precipitation was frequently among the strongest influences on ant community structure; however, urban development and human activities also had a strong, negative influence on ants, appearing in most models with DeltaAIC(c) < 2 for species richness and abundance patterns of SPUs and generalists. Response diversity was observed within SPUs, which suggests that the corresponding ecosystem services were maintained until development reached 30-40%. Our data provide evidence that ecosystem functions, such as water infiltration and soil productivity, may be diminished at sites subject to greater levels of urbanization and that conserving ant communities and the ecosystem services they provide could be an important target in land-use planning and conservation efforts.

The contribution discusses the development of Vače, one of the smallest Slovenian market towns, from its beginnings to the mid-nineteenth century. The place first appeared in written sources at a relatively late stage (1429), and its main feature was that, unlike most Slovenian market towns, it did not develop as a suburban settlement below the castle as the seigniorial seat but a bit further away, around the vicariate and later parish church. Of the four market towns in Upper Carniola, Vače was the only »classical« market town, meaning that it emerged in the Middle Ages, exercised the standard economic functions of market-town settlements, and enjoyed a full administrative-judicial autonomy. Due to the specific structure of the sources preserved, much more is known about the normative aspect of the market town’s internal structure than about the practical implementation of its self-administration and the lower judiciary. In terms of economy, Vače functioned as a typical small market town with well-established trade fairs and craftsmen, whose basic craft services catered to the needs of the local population.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej has been paid tribute to and presented with many international awards asthe world’s “Development King.” Throughout 60 years of His Majesty’s reign, there have been over 3,000royally-initiated projects for country development and improving the livelihood of his subjects. This research isintended to investigate His Majesty’s concepts in royally-initiated urban, community and architecturedevelopment, especially among those projects that are vital and beneficial to social and national development.It covers royally-initiated projects in urban development and improving the quality of life regarding traffic andtransportation, flood mitigation, improvement of water quality, the provision of open spaces for urban areas,royally-initiated projects in self-reliant community development, community development through knowledgemanagement, community development in enhancing spiritual and social cohesion, including royally-initiatedprojects in royal architecture and religious architecture development. Applicability analyses focus on thepotential for future application in royally-initiated development models as well as on the legislative dimension.In parallel to examining the accomplishments and constraints of selected projects, comprehensiveanalyses are undertaken concerning concepts and theories/principles related to royal initiatives, His Majesty’sroles and concepts, royal statements and guidance, activities, etc. To provide a sufficient basis for conceptinvestigation, relevant information was collected from documentary resources, physical surveys and structuredinterviews of key informants. Through systematic analyses of the arrays of concepts among various urban,community and architecture development initiatives, underlying development concepts, which are substantiallyphilosophy/principles, have been emerged. Further integration of the proposed significantunderlying concepts reveals a “sufficiency development” approach.

The lack of land resource prompts space-limited city to change existing urban development mode. The cases of Hong Kong and Singapore show that the compact development mode,which requires construction land concentrated distribution and urban functions comprehensive allocation in urban center,meets the demand of space-limited city. The isolated and circle urban form of Xiamen Island makes Xiamen a typical space-limited city. So Xiamen Island is an ideal object for the study of urban compact development theory in the expansion of space-limited city. The urban landscape has obvious northern and eastern expansion trend in Xiamen Island. This paper chooses Xiahe-Jiahe Road as north-southern axes,and Hubinbei-Luling Road as west-eastern axes. From south to north and from west to east,the two belt transects are divided into 10 quadrats,respectively. We select CA and PLAND landscape metrics in class level to analyze the landscape pattern feature of old town and vertical and horizontal development axes in Xiamen Island. We quantify space saturation by the urban construction area to available area ratio and urban function simplification by the max value of subtraction results of every urban function's PLAND value and six urban function's PLAND mean value in each quadrat. The more compact the quadrat is,the bigger the space saturation is and the smaller the urban function simplification is. The results show that:( 1) Only 20% quadrats meet the requirements of compact city theory and the quadrats are far away from each other. Thatis to say,Xiamen Island has not yet formed in true compact city central district.( 2) The urban functions are balanced for the quadrats at the northern and eastern end of Xiamen Island. The urban construction level is low and has potential for growth.( 3) Although 65% quadrats have relative high space saturation,the urban function is still simple. Most quadrats are dominated by residence. The proportion of public service function and business service function are very small or even zero.( 4) In the progress of the urbanization landscape expansions to the north and to the east,the strength of land use decreases,urban function comprehensiveness is low although there is a trend of increase and change of urban function in the major built-up area of Xiamen Island. In a word,the development level of Xiamen Island is far from the requirements of compact development theory. At last,we put forward six recommendations about compact construction and renewal development of Xiamen Island and point out the emphasis in future research.

Polycentricity, Performance and Planning: Concepts, Evidence and Policy in Barcelona, Catalonia

Polycentricity, Performance and Planning: Concepts, Evidence and Policy in Barcelona, Catalonia

Problem statement More than half of the world’s population currently lives in urban settlements, a proportion that is expected to increase to more than 65 percent by 2050 (UN, 2014). The larger agglomerations are a complex spatial configuration of places and flows that are polycentric by nature, or at least they demonstrate a certain development of a multi-center structure. Recently, the focus on agglomerations’ polycentric structure has attracted a great deal of attention from both researchers and policymakers, who must manage the economic, social, and environmental challenges that the population of these metropolitan agglomerations will experience in the coming decades. In research, a considerable portion of the study of polycentric agglomerations has focused on the conceptualization of polycentricity and the empirical analysis of its economic, social, and environmental dis(advantages). Although academics have made a strong effort both to clarify the concept of polycentricity and to empirically explore its dis(advantages)—see, e.g., the special issues of journals such as European Planning Studies (1998; 2015), Urban Studies (2001) and Regional Studies (2014)—two major issues remain in the literature. First, various approaches to polycentricity co-exist without a high level of integration. One approach refers to polycentricity on the intra-urban (Davoudi, 2003) or intra-metropolitan scale (Brezzi and Veneri, 2015; Limtanakool, 2006), whereas another refers to polycentricity on the inter-urban (Davoudi, 2003) or regional scale (Brezzi and Veneri, 2015; Veneri and Burgalassi, 2012). Moreover, when these approaches are integrated, they are often conflated, at least to an extent (Van Meeteren et al., 2015). Second, empirical examinations of the economic, social and environmental advantages of polycentricity have not yet led to conclusive findings (see, e.g., Burger, 2011; Lee, 2006a; Meijers, 2007a). In the policy realm, polycentric development appears to be the main hallmark of spatial plans for metropolitan areas worldwide. Indeed, more than 75 percent of recent spatial plans developed for large metropolitan areas in OECD countries consider polycentric development as the best strategy for managing urban development. Some of the key policy objectives that polycentric development is expected to fulfill include offering an economical, efficient transportation system and a sustainable environment, along with extending access to education, jobs, amenities, and decent housing to a large number of people. Policy experts’ current interest in polycentricity is rooted in the early 1990s, when after two decades of focusing on local urban development projects and land-use regulations, planning practice refocused its attention on producing strategic frameworks and visions for territorial development in cities and metropolitan regions, strongly emphasizing their relationship with sustainable development (Albrechts et al., 2003). Polycentric development therefore re-entered planning practice as a bridging concept between sustainable development (broadly interpreted as fulfilling economic, social, and environmental objectives) and territorial development. However, the understanding of polycentric development in current planning policies appears largely disconnected from the ongoing polycentricity debate in research. This lack of connection between the understanding of polycentricity in research (evidence) and in policy (spatial plans) becomes apparent when considering the issue of how polycentric development can be conceptualized in spatial plans and how the assumed benefits of polycentricity can be realized in planning practice. This issue is of great importance to facilitating a more evidence-informed planning in which polycentricity appears as a bridge-building tool between research (evidence) and policy (spatial plans) with the aim of improving the feasibility and effectiveness of spatial plans’ economic, social, and environmental objectives. It is necessary to conduct a further exploration of the three aforementioned major issues related to (1) the conceptualization of polycentricity, (2) the empirical analysis of the dis(advantages) of polycentricity, and (3) how to interpret the relationship between polycentricity in research and polycentricity in policy. That is the key motivation for this thesis: to link the knowledge of polycentric constellations and their economic, social, and environmental effects to planning practice and policy in metropolitan areas. General aims and questions The overarching research goal of this dissertation is to contribute to the debate on polycentricity in the three interrelated issues mentioned above. First, it aims to renew the conceptualization of polycentricity by bringing together two distinct literatures, namely, the literature on intra-urban polycentricity and the literature on inter-urban polycentricity. Second, it aims to empirically substantiate the relationship between polycentricity and performance in metropolitan areas. Third, it aims to understand how the makers of spatial plans have addressed polycentric development and how the assumed benefits of polycentricity can be realized in planning practice. To accomplish these goals, this thesis addresses three general research questions: • How has the conceptualization of polycentric development in spatial plans evolved over time, and what can be learned from this evolution? • How has polycentricity been conceptualized in research, and how can it inform planning practice? • To what extent does polycentricity foster better performance in a metropolitan area, and how can its effects be realized in planning practice? Single case study: the Barcelona metropolitan region The case study of this thesis is the Barcelona metropolitan region. With approximately 5 million people, the Barcelona metropolitan region is the primary urban agglomeration of Catalonia, an autonomous region of 7.5 million inhabitants that is located in Spain. The study on the multiple links among polycentricity, performance, and planning within the Barcelona metropolitan region yields learning potential for other metropolitan regions because there exists, for example, a strong historical planning tradition in Catalonia and ideas on polycentric development have been around for many decades. This enables the study of transition patterns in the conceptualization of polycentric development in planning over time. Even the most recent plan for the Barcelona metropolitan region, the 2010 Barcelona Metropolitan Territorial Plan, is influenced by a planning vision of polycentricity that was coined by the 1966 Director Scheme of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. The latter plan was one of the first to break with the then-popular concentric model of green belts and satellite cities and to propose networked, polycentric spatial configurations to resolve the pressure of urbanization on metropolitan regions’ central cities. Research methods This dissertation employs several research methods to explore how the multiple relationships among polycentricity, performance, and planning manifest themselves in the Barcelona metropolitan region. The methods used include qualitative methods such as policy/discourse analysis to answer the first general research question about how the conceptualization of polycentric development in spatial plans has evolved over time and what can be learned from this evolution. Additionally, this thesis employs quantitative methods such as descriptive statistics, correspondence analysis, simple regression models, and advanced regression models (in which both spatial autocorrelation and endogeneity issues are controlled to avoid biased estimation results) to address the second general question, which refers to how polycentricity has been identified and measured in research and how this identification and measurement of polycentricity can inform planning practice. Finally, this research uses advanced statistical methods to answer the third general question of the extent to which polycentricity fosters better performance in a metropolitan area and how the effects of polycentricity can be realized in planning practice. These methods include both multilevel multinomial logit models and multilevel structural equation models. Because of the use of these models, this dissertation can explain the estimated effects of the link between polycentricity and performance to architects, planners, and policymakers in an evidence-informed form. Contributions to the literature In fulfilling the threefold goal of this thesis to contribute to the debate on polycentricity with respect to the three interrelated issues mentioned above, this thesis has also made two other main contributions. First, this dissertation has proposed a novel methodology to identify centers in metropolitan areas by considering the different pathways through which centers, and thus a polycentric configuration, may emerge, namely, the decentralization and the incorporation-fusion trajectories. This required the integration of two quite separate literatures. What also added to the novelty of this methodology was the introduction of the concept of ‘agglomeration shadows’, which has received little attention in the literature, when evaluating this identification method against its fit with the theoretical and empirical (polycentric) models adopted in the economics literature. More specifically, this thesis has also proposed a new, theory-informed conceptualization of centers as not only places with the highest level of agglomeration economies in a metropolitan area but also places that cast the most wide-ranging (spatially), powerful agglomeration shadows over their surroundings. Therefore, the center’s concept proposed in this dissertation is not exclusively static; instead, it is also placed into a dynamic perspective: a center in a metropolitan area must cast an ‘agglomeration shadow’ (growth shadow effects) over its surrounding areas, meaning that the number of firms and the amount of urban development (growth) in areas near a center will be limited because of fierce competition effects. Second, this thesis has proposed a conceptual framework for exploring the link between polycentricity (on the intra-urban scale) and metropolitan performance aimed at enabling broad testing of the effects of polycentricity. Building upon the relationship between theories of agglomeration and polycentricity in the literature, this thesis argues that the consideration of three distinct dimensions of a polycentric spatial structure that play a role in the development of agglomeration economies in a metropolitan area—namely, (1) the size of centers, (2) the (geographic) proximity to centers, and (3) the aggregate size of centers through their integration—allows scholars to arrive at broader conclusions about the effects of polycentricity. The translation of these three dimensions of a polycentric metropolitan structure into a more comprehensive, systematic empirical framework has required an examination of the effects (1) of being located in or oriented toward centers, (2) of being located close to centers, and (3) of interaction patterns among centers. Conclusions Below are the main conclusions regarding the three general research questions. How has the conceptualization of polycentric development in spatial plans evolved over time, and what can be learned from this evolution? Envisioning polycentric development in spatial plans has become a hallmark of planning practice in Catalonia. The first vision of polycentric development appeared in the 1930s as a response to the debate about the urban-rural opposition between Barcelona (city) and Catalonia (countryside) that resulted from increasing demands to address the (negative) challenges posed by cities’ industrialization. Since then, the vision of polycentric development in spatial plans evolved, showing two transitions in its conceptualization in successive plans. The first transition was that although polycentricity was first conceptualized as a decentralization strategy aimed at restricting Barcelona’s growth, it later changed into a territorial model to organize and canalize future urban development building on the urban dynamics themselves. The second transition involved the addition of a network perception to the vision on polycentric development. This network perception on polycentricity made a definitive contribution to overcoming the antagonism between Barcelona and Catalonia because it integrated the capital city of Barcelona into a polycentric territorial model for the entire territory of Catalonia. The applications of polycentric development in various spatial plans in Catalonia also exposed some shortcomings stemming from spatial plans’ prescriptive or normative approaches to defining polycentric development in which the empirical evidence related to existing territory was overlooked. However, the simultaneous consideration of all of the applications of polycentric development in spatial plans—and therefore, when the role played by factors other than evidence, such as interests and institutional policy traditions can be better disentangled—noted that some shortcomings in the definition of a polycentric development strategy can be explained by the fact that to a certain extent, plans are indeed politicized. This posed the challenge of building an understanding of polycentric development that was more closely connected to the ongoing academic debate on polycentricity and thus, a call for a more evidence-informed planning based on an improved knowledge of polycentricity, primarily respect for its conceptualization (identification and measurement) and effects on the economic, social, and environmental performance of metropolitan areas. Public and private actors influencing policy, for example, through their ideology or their own interests, would occupy a crucial role in the implementation of this understanding of polycentric development, based on considering (or not) the policy guidelines/recommendations that resulted from empirical evidence and aimed to improve the effectiveness and feasibility of spatial plans. How has polycentricity been conceptualized in research, and how can it inform planning practice? A better integration between the literatures on the conceptualization of polycentricity potentially informs spatial plans about the effectiveness and feasibility of polycentric development strategies. This integration revealed which method (empirical or non-empirical) of identifying centers most accurately defines the polycentric model in the Barcelona metropolitan region, which is an essential step in empirically substantiating the link between polycentricity and performance in a metropolitan area because differences in the identification of centers could lead to different conclusions on the understanding of the costs and benefits of a polycentric metropolitan structure. The main advantage of the novel method of identifying centers that is proposed and tested here is that it considers the various pathways through which centers may emerge, namely, the decentralization and the incorporation-fusion trajectories. This method was better able to identify as centers those cities that have the highest level of agglomeration economies and cast the most severe agglomeration shadows over their surroundings. In addition, the incorporation of the functional and morphological dimensions of polycentricity—as traditionally coined by the inter-urban polycentricity literature—into the measurement of the degree of polycentricity on the intra-urban scale has contributed to building more sound arguments either for or against supporting a polycentric development strategy in a metropolitan area. Additionally, it has provided planners with valuable insights into not only how to address issues related to the understanding, governance implications, and expectations of polycentric development but also how to monitor the implementation of a polycentric development strategy. To what extent does polycentricity foster better performance in a metropolitan area, and how can its effects be realized in planning practice? A polycentric metropolitan structure exerts a considerable influence—both active and passive—on enhancing performance in a metropolitan area through individuals’ travel behavior. The effects of polycentricity—i.e., (1) of being located in or oriented toward centers, (2) of being located close to centers, and (3) of interaction patterns among centers—appear to be generally larger than the effects of individual-specific characteristics (i.e., sociodemographic characteristics and travel-related attitudes) and built environment attributes with respect to encouraging people to use more intensely sustainable mode choices (public transit and non-motorized modes) and reducing travel behavior externalities (i.e., trip distance, trip time, and transportation-related CO2 emissions). More specifically, the most important dimension of a polycentric metropolitan structure in fostering a more sustainable mobility pattern is generally the type of interaction, followed by the type of city, which in turn is more important than the distance to centers. Based on these effects, polycentric development fosters better performance in the Barcelona metropolitan region because it has influenced individuals’ travel behavior through three different dimensions. First, people living in centers or doing their daily activities in these centers use more public transit or slow modes, and their trips are shorter, take less time, and cause less transportation-related CO2 emissions than if they do not live in centers or are not carrying out their activities in these centers. Second, people living close to centers exhibit a more sustainable pattern of travel behavior than those living further away. Third, people traveling among centers are more likely to use public transportation, to experience shorter-length or -duration trips and to make greater reductions in the environmental impact of their travel than people traveling among peripheral areas. In short, agglomeration benefits in a polycentric metropolitan region explain these three aforementioned findings. Therefore, the translation of the benefits of polycentricity into planning policies requires the simultaneous consideration of (1) the size of centers, (2) the size of and proximity to centers, and (3) the size of and interaction among centers. Evidence-informed guidelines for planning policies The estimated effects of polycentricity on individuals’ travel behavior have led to a set of policy recommendations on urban and transportation developments that will enhance the performance of the Barcelona metropolitan region. These policies inform the plans’ makers about how the benefits of polycentricity can be realized in planning practice and therefore, provide them with an improved understanding of polycentric development to more effectively fulfill spatial plans’ economic, social, and environmental objectives. Essentially, the translation of the benefits of polycentricity into evidence-informed guidelines for planning policies has required the consideration of the various dimensions of a polycentric spatial structure that play a role in the development of agglomeration benefits in a metropolitan area: (1) the size of centers, (2) the proximity to centers, and (3) the aggregate size of centers through their integration. Seven policy recommendations have been elaborated to improve the effectiveness of the planning objectives of the 2010 Barcelona Metropolitan Territorial Plan in terms of individuals’ travel costs and the environmental impact of travel. Aggregate size of centers through their integration • Support new, more efficient public transportation networks among centers to allow those centers to better exploit their aggregate urban size, leading to a greater development of agglomeration economies. • Enhance the complementarity among centers on the metropolitan scale in terms of economic sectors, occupations, and urban functions through promoting compact-city/transit-oriented development. • Support new, more efficient public transportation networks between centers and their neighboring areas to stimulate interactions toward centers and increase nearby residents’ access to the agglomeration benefits of centers that are integrated with their nearest center. • Support new, more efficient road networks among secondary centers to mitigate congestion along the radial transportation axes oriented toward the central city of Barcelona. Size of centers • Promote compact-city/transit-oriented development in existing centers (central city and secondary centers) to encourage more residents of centers to access their agglomeration benefits. Proximity to centers • Promote compact-city/transit-oriented development in larger places near centers to allow more residents of these centers’ neighboring areas to benefit from their proximity to the agglomeration benefits of one or more centers. • Limit growth in areas located further away from centers both to mitigate (as much as possible) the high travel costs (trip distance and time) incurred by the residents of these peripheral areas and to decrease the transportation-related CO2 emissions that they cause. Agenda for research and policy Despite providing new insights and conceptual and empirical frameworks to analyze the multiple relationships between polycentricity, performance, and planning in metropolitan regions, further research is needed to address a range of challenges and research gaps that this dissertation could not cover in their entirety. These challenges and research gaps refer both to the Barcelona metropolitan region case and to more general advances that are needed in the reciprocal relationships among polycentricity, performance, and planning. The focus on individuals’ travel behavior in this dissertation’s empirical analyses needs to be extended to achieve broader conclusions about the effects of polycentricity on the performance of the Barcelona metropolitan region. Moreover, this dissertation’s empirical analyses must be extended to elaborate more comprehensive evidence-informed guidelines for planning policies that address all of the planning objectives of the 2010 Barcelona Metropolitan Territorial Plan. Two additional research perspectives can be distinguished to address these demands. First, the object of analysis could be extended from people to firms and their spatial behavior. Second, a wider range of externalities could be considered. It would be particularly interesting to conduct additional research into the link between polycentricity and other indicators of performance such as labor productivity, unemployment, housing and land prices, income per capita, household-related CO2 emissions, and land consumption. The type of exploration performed in this thesis, a single case study, calls for further research into whether its findings can be corroborated in other metropolitan areas. Many perspectives on new research can be distinguished, but the following two are probably the most important. The first perspective would involve carrying out a multi-case study research aimed at examining the effects of polycentricity on metropolitan performance (using the indicators of performance mentioned above) by considering—and extending, if possible—the conceptual framework of this thesis mentioned above. The second perspective would involve conducting a multi-case study research aimed at testing the novel method of identifying centers proposed in this thesis against other identification methods.

Scaling law reveals unbalanced urban development in China

This paper illustrates the impact of urbanisation strategies on the spatial organisation and urban functioning of the metropolis of Constantine, highlighting new trends in the occupation of space and their repercussions on inhabitants’ practices. The approach adopted is based on centrality, combining indicators of concentration, mobility and attraction. Changes will be examined through socio-economic statistics and field surveys, in the form of observations, counting and questionnaire interviews with residents. The results obtained illustrate clearly the organisational shift, reflected by the spatial redistribution of centrality attributes (populations, activities, services), and the urban functioning mode, which is increasingly taking a polycentric form, generating new forms of multidirectional mobility on increasingly larger scales.

Based on the theory of industry city people and the perspective of configuration, an analytical framework of "industry support city function human orientation" was constructed. Under this framework, five conditional variables were selected: industrial structure, economic function, social function, population quality, and population structure. The top ten cities with good development momentum in China's e-sports industry were selected as the analysis samples, and the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method was used to explore the combined factors that affect the development of the e-sports industry in cities. The results showed that "industrial structure" is an indispensable condition for the development of the electronic sports industry in cities, while "economic function," "social function," "population quality," and "population structure" are not necessary conditions for constituting outcome variables. This indicates that the development of the e-sports industry in a city is the result of multiple intertwined factors, rather than a single factor playing a significant role. Research has found that there are three paths that can positively affect the development of the e-sports industry in cities, condensed into a dual wheel drive of industrial structure and economic function, a tripartite drive of industrial structure, social function, and population quality, and a co drive of industrial support and humanistic orientation. From the perspective of configuration, industrial structure, economic composition, and population quality are key conditions that affect the development of the e-sports industry in cities. The research conclusion indicates that to enhance the development of urban e-sports cities, it is necessary to reasonably layout the industrial structure, improve the level of urban economic development, and strengthen the comprehensive level of human capital.

Modern cities require urban compact development to be sustainable. The evaluation of urban compact development may help create more accurate and realistic policies. The spatio-temporal dynamic evolution of urban compact development efficiency and its regional differences in China are examined in this study. This paper analysis uses 282 cities from 2005 to 2021. The unexpected output super-efficiency SBM model measures urban compact development efficiency. In this study, the urban compact development efficiency’s spatial and temporal patterns are also examined using kernel density estimation (KDE) and the Theil index (TI). The average efficiency of urban compact development in China has decreased slightly. However, compact efficiency disparities are decreasing. Eastern cities have a relatively stable compact efficiency, while central and western cities vary more. The compact efficiency polarisation has not changed fundamentally. The compact city growth model’s spatial agglomeration is poor, limiting its spatial spillover impact. Thus, compact urban development is necessary to speed up planning, facilitate inter-city production factor movement by creating a comprehensive transport network, and maximise co-location benefits with the regional integration strategy. This method will gradually reduce regional urban development disparities and push Chinese cities towards more refined and sustainable compact development.

As the urban development continues, different parts of a city can grow or decay by varying degrees due to natural deterioration or changes in governmental policies. City is the center for business, culture, and social activities; is the place that reflects geography, commerce, society, and culture context; is a complex whole that is woven by “people,” “activity,” and “space” “People” in the “space” can process “activities,” therefore, activities and space can influence each other. In this research, we aim to obtain insights on urban morphology by analyzing the changes in urban spaces’ “activity” patterns. We aim to explore the relationship between urban spatial configuration and functionality. Space syntax methodology is applied to investigate the urban spatial structure concurrently with the analytic hierarchy process method for evaluating experts’ survey responses to attain urban functionality index. Subsequently, the analytical data are compared and categorized to reveal the city districts’ spatial characteristics and their correlation. This research has proven that the analysis findings are consistent with the actual urban conditions, and thus affirms our analytical framework of having a creditable comprehension of the advantage and disadvantage of urban spatial integrations and its functionality. Therefore, our research methodology can be applied as an efficient preliminary evaluation tool for conceiving the merits of city districts. Based on the findings of our research, authorities will be able to discuss the urban development agendas in greater detail with higher efficiency.

Precisely identifying the shifting urban spatial structures produced by urban forms and functions contributes to an advanced understanding of morphological dynamics and related planning practices. By reconceptualizing urban evolution as a centrality process in which spatial and functional centrality processes co-evolve, this paper explores the transformation of urban centrality structures of Shanghai, as captured by the shifting interdependence between spatial centrality indices and delivered urban function connectivity metrics, generated in tandem by spatial network and land-use patterns. Four snapshots of street networks and Points-of-Interest (POIs) in history are selected as a spatio-temporal description of the urban transformation of Central Shanghai. The results demonstrate that the centrality structures hidden behind the spatial networks and land-use distributions have affected each other dynamically and the characteristics of urban developments at various stages can be distinguished according to modes of spatio-functional interaction at multi-scales. The findings also indicate that shifting complex interrelationships between the spatial network and land-use patterns are the major determinants of the (re)formation of the urban function regions. The proposed framework offers valuable insights into the morphological evolution process of cities as indicated by the configurational interplay between form and function, thereby representing a novel way to identify urban change explicitly.