The Role of Contact Networks in Reconsidering Urban Systems Hierarchies

Abstract

The drastic changes occurring within the European continent during the last decade, such as the removal of national harriers within the European Community and the strengthening of economic and political relationships between countries, imply a neiv geo-economic order in Europe as well as considerable changes in the hierarchical relationships between the regional and urban production systems. Reconsideration of hierarchical relationships will be based upon a certain number of criteria such as economic, social, ethnic as well as polarization and accessibility to contact networks. As contact networks can be considered all kinds of networks, both physical as well as non physical. The emphasis given to the notion of contact networks reflects strongly the growing importance attached to the interaction taking place between the various actors or regions, which adds a new dimension to the relationship between networks and spatial development. The growing accessibility of urban centres based on various types of contact networks is expected to reconsider accessibility and development patterns in the urban hierarchy at a European scale. In such a context, the hierarchy of urban centres so far based on indicators such as production activities, population e.t.c. has been, at stake. Cities are nowadays acquiring the role of being the nodes of contact networks. The focus of this paper is related to the process of evolving urban hierarchy at a European scale in the light of accessibility of urban centres to contact networks, both from a theoretical as well as a methodological point of view. The paper aims at establishing a methodological paradigm for evaluating the dynamics of urban hierarchy, where the issue of accessibility to contact networks is taken into account through various accessibility indicators.