Towards the Polycentric Urban Region: Impacts on Centres and Milieus

Abstract

Over the past four decades, many urban regions, including the Amsterdam region, have changed from compact monocentric urban entities to - albeit still fairly compact - polycentric urban regions. This has been illustrated frequently and in various ways, for example with daily interaction information. A question relevant to this transformation concerns the implications it poses to the different centres and milieus in the urban region, especially the “old” central city. Is the central city quickly losing position, or is it gaining a new, vital place in the urban region? Can the answer to that be deduced from the population dynamics in the urban region? Is insight into the residential mobility process helpful in understanding the changing residential structure and the functioning of the urban system? This paper addresses these questions, using data that make it possible to analyse urban dynamics.