Polycentric Structure Research Articles

Commercial gentrification in China and its distribution, development, and correlates: The case of Chengdu

Within the Anglo-American literature, commercial, along with residential, gentrification has often been treated as an attendant neighborhood phenomenon. This study aims to uncover the distribution of areas for emerging consumption that indicate the occurrence of commercial gentrification, as well as to explain the development process and spatial correlations of commercial gentrification in Chengdu, a large Chinese city. With the data of points of interest (POIs), the study categorizes new retail places for commercial gentrification and conducts spatial and statistical analyses. The following findings are revealed: First, the distribution of new retail places changed from a monocentric to a polycentric structure in the main urban areas of Chengdu from 2010 to 2020, wherein high-density areas were partially overlapped with traditional commercial centers. Second, commercial gentrification in Chengdu was presented by the fastest growth of the entertainment services in the 2010s. Third, commercial gentrification in Chengdu shifted from a centripetal to a centrifugal development pattern from 2010 to 2020. The geographies of development were variegated, connected with multiple location attributes and impacted by local governments’ urban development strategies. Fourth, commercial gentrification was positively correlated with the growth of knowledge-intensive industries but negatively related to the change in both traditionally secondary and tertiary sectors in the past decade. Finally, changes in housing prices showed no connection with commercial gentrification during the studied period. The study suggests that commercial gentrification should be treated as a phenomenon of industrial gentrification, independent of residential gentrification. The commercial spatial planning in the city should play close attention to the synergic and exclusive relations between new retail industries and the evolution of industrial spaces in the emerging post-industrial city economy.

Detecting Spatial Communities in Vehicle Movements by Combining Multi-Level Merging and Consensus Clustering

Identifying spatial communities in vehicle movements is vital for sensing human mobility patterns and urban structures. Spatial community detection has been proven to be an NP-Hard problem. Heuristic algorithms were widely used for detecting spatial communities. However, the spatial communities identified by existing heuristic algorithms are usually locally optimal and unstable. To alleviate these limitations, this study developed a hybrid heuristic algorithm by combining multi-level merging and consensus clustering. We first constructed a weighted spatially embedded network with road segments as vertices and the numbers of vehicle trips between the road segments as weights. Then, to jump out of the local optimum trap, a new multi-level merging approach, i.e., iterative local moving and global perturbation, was proposed to optimize the objective function (i.e., modularity) until a maximum of modularity was obtained. Finally, to obtain a representative and reliable spatial community structure, consensus clustering was performed to generate a more stable spatial community structure out of a set of community detection results. Experiments on Beijing taxi trajectory data show that the proposed method outperforms a state-of-the-art method, spatially constrained Leiden (Scleiden), because the proposed method can escape from the local optimum solutions and improve the stability of the identified spatial community structure. The spatial communities identified by the proposed method can reveal the polycentric structure and human mobility patterns in Beijing, which may provide useful references for human-centric urban planning.

Design Example of Catalyst Effect Analysis with Topological Graphing

Urban catalyst theory is based on the excavation of the phenomenon of "mutual stimulation of elements", designing and amplifying the synergistic effect between elements, that is, the catalyst effect. In this paper, the topological analysis framework of the dotted-line relationship of physical space is introduced, and it is found that the topology of the catalyst effect has distinct characteristics. This is a minor innovation in the understanding of urban catalyst theory. A case of urban catalyst theory illustrates a full process of transforming the elements that produce the catalyst effect from "grand-centered structure" to "polycentric structure" to "distributed structure". Starting from the classic case, this paper reproduces and further shows the occurrence process of the catalyst effect from the perspective of topology, and uses more cases to show the design of different types of catalyst effects, providing new ideas and references for future design on catalyst effects for different situations.

О СИНОНИМСКИМ ВАРИЈАНТАМА У ДИСКУРСУ ЕЛЕКТРОНСКИХ МЕДИЈА РЕПУБЛИКЕ СРПСКЕ И ФЕДЕРАЦИЈЕ БОСНЕ И ХЕРЦЕГОВИНЕ

The topic we decided on deals with the current issue of the functioning of the language in BiH. It belongs primarily to the field of stylistics and involves the analysis of different variants of the linguistically same language, which is sociolinguistically called by three names: Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak. The paper will analyze the discourse of public communication on the example of the use of Serbian in electronic media Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Linguistic and stylistic analysis will be focused on a comparative analysis of synonymous units of the Serbian language that are variant polarized into Serbian, Croatian and Bosniak standard language expression. The cases of the so-called mixing standard language expressions in the same text and their stylistic marking. The research material will include online editions of daily newspapers in the Republic of Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These are the most visited information portals such as Glas Srpske, Nezavisne novine, Dnevni avaz, Oslobođenje and Dnevnik. The goal of the linguistic-stylistic analysis is to single out lexical units of a synonymous character whose distribution is conditioned by the polycentric structure of the Serbian language as a system. The lexical differences between the three language standards of Serbian are those that concern the whole word.

Developing Polycentricity to Shape Resilient Metropolitan Structures: The Case of the Gdansk–Gdynia–Sopot Metropolitan Area

Making the metropolitan area resilient, in many cases, calls for amending its spatial structures. This may take various forms, including both reshaping the metropolitan core and redeveloping the entire regional network of cities and centres, making them part of a coherent structure. The latter strategy is associated with reinforcing secondary urban centres as well as shaping new connections between them. In this case, the term “resilience” is associated not only with environmental aspects but also with socio-economic and spatial ones. Shaping resilient metropolitan areas is therefore associated with complex planning and development undertakings, in many cases spread over decades. This approach was proven to be correct during the recent Covid-19 pandemic, which spurred this process of rethinking metropolitan structures and led to generating new approaches to metropolitan development and planning. The article focuses on the Gdansk–Gdynia–Sopot Metropolitan Area, which is potentially the largest polycentric metropolitan area on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea. In this case, polycentricity has a twofold origin—it includes centres with a shaped spatial structure that come closer together as they develop and diffuse suburban structure, the shaping of which remains one of the main challenges of the regional spatial policy. The authors look at both concepts and tools associated with reshaping this metropolitan centre. In particular, they analyse the effects of using both obligatory and optional planning tools which are available according to Polish law. They also try to answer the question of under what conditions a polycentric structure has a chance to become a resistant structure.

Morphological and functional polycentric structure assessment of megacity: An integrated approach with spatial distribution and interaction

Polycentric urban structures are important spatial development strategies in megacities; however, they have decentralized morphologies and functional characteristics that profoundly impact urban space development. Therefore, when promoting sustainable development in urban areas in Shenyang, the only megacity in northeast China, it is important to explore the polycentric spatial development of megacities based on multi-source data, geographic information system spatial analysis, and network model methods. This study was conducted to examine the polycentric structures of the morphological and functional dimensions. The results showed that morphological polycentric space can be defined as “centralized dispersion,” with the functional polycentric only comprised “decentralized concentration.” Additionally, agglomeration sub-centers of the morphological dimension were all on the periphery of the city, although the three sub-centers within the city (M6, M7, and M8) were diffusion types. In the functional dimension, sub-centers F7 and F6 exhibited high centrality and power for both agglomeration and diffusion. Finally, four-node motifs were more important than three-node motifs in the morphological polycentric micro-networks, but their frequency was low, whereas that of three-node motifs were more important than four-node motifs in functional polycentric micro-networks, and their occurrence frequency was high.

Exploring the Polycentric Structure and Driving Mechanism of Urban Regions From the Perspective of Innovation Network

Polycentric city-regional development has become a buzzword for urban scholars and planners around the world. Inspired by the two critical characteristics of the polycentric urban region (PUR) as incubators and hinges of knowledge production, this study revealed the evolution of the polycentric structure and driving mechanism of PUR from the perspective of innovation network by using unique inter-city patent cooperation data. The results show that: 1) The innovation networks exhibit hierarchical and uneven characteristics, with the economic core cities becoming incubators and hinges of innovation and dominating the development of innovation networks. 2) There is compatibility between morphological polycentricity and functional polycentricity in PURs, but there are also differences. Although the morphological polycentricity of three PURs has improved, functional polycentricity is underdeveloped. 3) The geographic, institutional, institutional, and cultural proximity play the facilitating role for inter-city knowledge flows and their polycentric enhancement, but city attributes such as population size have a lower impact. Our study is believed to renew the knowledge polycentricity conceptualization and enlighten the evolution of innovation network.

Detecting shifts in metropolitan structure: A spatial network perspective

The spatial distribution of metropolitan areas creates a complex system of competing and cooperating economic units. Understanding the size, scale and functional structure of such systems is an important topic in regional science. This paper uses commuter flow data over a 40 year period to analyse the changing structure of the Greater Manchester metropolitan area. We apply a combination of complex network analysis, residual network analysis and spatial network visualisation to detect Greater Manchester’s polycentric structure and identify intra-regional communities. This method is able to identify economic geographies in a highly complex and interdependent commuter network. We comment on the role of administrative boundaries in shaping metropolitan regions and discuss the potential of our work to inform debates on regional governance geographies and local government planning practices.

Research on urban spatial structure based on the dual constraints of geographic environment and POI big data

A large number of cities in China have proposed the spatial development strategy of polycentric in their planning, but whether the evolution of polycentric structure meets the planning expectation and whether the polycentric structure and function can be identified through effective ways has become a hot topic of academic research at present. Compared with the traditional survey and identification methods of population, land use and industry, the emergence of urban big data provides an opportunity for polycentric identification, especially the analysis based on POI (Point of Interest) big data is more accurate and efficient than the traditional methods. Chongqing, as a typical representative of mountainous cities, has chosen the development model of polycentric clusters at an early stage and strengthened it in the planning, forming a real polycentric city with both form and function, which makes it typical and representative among polycentric cities in China. Based on the POI data of Chongqing's main urban area, the paper identifies the polycentric structure of the city as a whole and different functions and its influence range based on the spatial distribution characteristics and aggregation degree of the overall and different types of POI data. The results show that Chongqing, as a mountainous city, exhibits an obvious “polycentric and clustered” structure under natural constraints and planning guidance. The study of Chongqing can reveal the differences between the polycentric characteristics of mountain cities and plain cities, summarize the effectiveness and shortcomings of polycentric development, and provide useful reference for urban planning. This paper collects all kinds of geospatial data, network big data and all kinds of historical statistical yearbook data in the main urban area of Chongqing. The experimental results show that by using the double constraints of POI big data and geographical environment, Chongqing is in urban polycentric structure, different functional types of urban centers, and employment function space and leisure and recreation function space have many advantages.

Who innovates with whom and why? A comparative analysis of the global research networks supporting climate change mitigation

A paucity of research investigates the heterogeneity in global R&D collaboration across climate change mitigation technological fields, limiting understanding of major players, inter-country relationships, and stimulus. Using co-inventive patent data obtained from the OECD.Stat for the period 2004–2018, this study applies social network analysis and exponential random graph models (ERGMs). The spatiotemporal dynamics and determinants of international R&D collaboration networks are investigated in the four major domains of CCMTs, namely, green energy (EGTD), green ICT (ICT), green transportation (TRANS), and green building (BUILD). Results reveal that while all four types of R&D networks share the characteristic of an obvious core-periphery structure, their core structures differ. BUILD and ICT have tri-polar worlds, with the former centered on the USA, China, and Germany, and the latter substituting Germany with India. TRANS maintains the bi-polar state led by the USA and Germany, whereas EGTD is the sole category that has evolved into a polycentric structure with hubs made up of developed and emerging countries. Path-dependence effects, hierarchy diffusion, and path breaking are embodied in networking mechanisms. In all technological fields, the top three triggers for collaborative networks are technology proximity, triadic closure, and bilateral trade, while the promotion effect of environmental regulation is emerging. Inter-country economic scale differences and language proximity exert waning effects on nearly all technological fields. North-South and South-South cooperation have much less influence on network evolution than North-North cooperation, and a diminishing tendency of South-South cooperation is particularly visible in BUILD.

Advancing the concept of cybersecurity as a public good

This paper presents an agent-based model of cybersecurity as a participatory public good. Ineffective cybersecurity measures pose serious threats and risks to the development and stability of information societies in the world. Various doctrines and thesis explore how this domain should be treated by the public and private stakeholders. One of these doctrines is cybersecurity as a public good. In this paper, we highlight divergent views about the type of cybersecurity as an economic good. Then, the paper proposes an agent-based simulation model of a repeated public goods game among a set of defenders that are in an uncertain environment with incomplete and imperfect information. In the model, defenders have a probability to choose contribution or being a free-rider, depending on their own preferences and facing with revealed preferences of other defenders. This model implements a utility maximization that applies to each individual, modeling the existence of free-riders, punishments, and interdependency of decisions under a polycentric governance structure. The results of this simulation model show that, over time, defenders update their preferences in reaction to the behavior of other defenders and the experience of cyber-attacks. They indicate a high level of contribution to the provision of cybersecurity as a public good and the effectiveness of decentralized punishment on increasing the contributions. The consistency of the pattern of our results across different empirical studies lends us some reassurance that our model behavior is in quantitative agreement with empirical macro-structures. Furthermore, implementation of a polycentric structure challenges all the relevant agents to take action, and provides more robust environment.

ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ ТЕРРИТОРИАЛЬНОЙ СТРУКТУРЫ ВНУТРЕННИХ ПАССАЖИРСКИХ АВИАПЕРЕВОЗОК В РОССИИ (1960–1970-е и 2010-е годы)

The article compares changes in the territorial structure of passenger air transportation in 1965–1975 and 2014–2018. The author’s method of assessing its change has been developed. The air directions are divided into 5 groups: with Moscow, St. Petersburg, with the airports of the most important resorts, interregional and intraregional. The development of the air transportation system in the Soviet and modern periods differs signifi both in groups and in terms of network-wide indicators – technological and economic. During the Soviet period, the polycentric structure became more complex than the modern monocentric one. In the modern conditions, the average distance of transportation continues to grow, which means that the territorial structure is stretching. In the structure of air transportation directions in the 2010sthere was an enlargement and concentration of passenger traffi which simplifi the view of the entire territorial structure of air transportation. Several transport directions begin to dominate in the structure of Moscow passenger airlines, in St. Petersburg air transportation, the share of Moscow is decreasing, in interregional transportation, the development of a hub air transportation system. The growth in passenger turnover of the largest air hubs and airports is also due to an increase in the number of transfer passengers; the structure of local airlines has simplifi due to the concentration of passenger traffi in the most remote and / or inaccessible directions for ground transport; it increases the average fl range.

Формирование китайского направления политики ЕС: роль стран Центральной и Восточной Европы

The Chinese direction of the EU policy-making process is often explained by the return of great power competition and the balance of power strategy in the contemporary word politics. The EU is thus considered as a quasi-state actor with geopolitical aspirations either to balance Chinese growth in cooperation with the US or to strive for an independent role in a polycentric structure. The presented research aims to assess domestic driving forces influencing the EU common position vis-a-vis China through the prism of accommodating national interests of the CEE member-states. The authors hypothesize that cooperation between the CEE countries and China is not a reason for hardening the position of the EU, but a mobilization pretext contributing to the organizational resource of Brussels against the backdrop of global changes. The study provides the analysis of interests behind the policy of CEE countries towards China, and the degree of its possible influence on the Chinese direction of the EU policy making. The research aimes to fill the gap in academic literature in understanding mechanisms of dependency of the EU policy on economic interests of its member states as well as on political aspirations to leverage the EU institutions. The authors explain the main reasons for special relations of the CEE countries with China, and then analyze the ratio of national and pan-European policy tracks towards Beijing in order to illustrate their mutual influence. The EU and its member-states are prone to economic cooperation with China seen as a critical resource for their development. At the same time Brussels is concerned about the destabilizing potential of such a cooperation for the EU normative consensus which exacerbates the problem of intraunion consolidation. This paradox contributes to the exaggeration of restrictive conditions for further EU–China cooperation and to the partial redistribution of resources within the European Union.

Unraveling the association between the urban polycentric structure and urban surface thermal environment in urbanizing China

• A novel set of indicators was developed to measure the urban surface thermal environment. • Spatial regression model performs well in fitting the spatial autocorrelation of the land surface temperature among cities. • No significant association was found between the urban polycentric structure and average land surface temperature. • Polycentric structure is conducive to the formation of smaller and more fragmented high-temperature patches. The urban surface thermal environment has greatly changed in China's accelerated urbanization process, which is closely related to urban eco-security, socioeconomic activities, and residents’ comfort and health. Recent studies have focused on the effects of urban form optimization on the urban surface thermal environment, but few have been conducted from an urban polycentric structure perspective. This paper quantified the association between the urban polycentric structure and urban surface thermal environment of Chinese major cities at the prefecture level and above in 2015, 2010 and 2003 using spatial regression. The results revealed that (1) no significant association were found between the urban polycentric structure and the average land surface temperature (LST). (2) Both the increase in the urban center number (N) and the degree of polycentricity (POLY) are conducive to a uniform LST distribution and an increase in the number of high-temperature patches. In 2003, 2010 and 2015, the effect coefficients of POLY and N on the standard deviation of LST ranges from -0.126 to 0.102 and from -0.132 to -0.094, respectively, and on the number of different high-temperature patches ranges from 0.067 to 0.197 and from 0.098 to 0.502, respectively. (3) The increase in the degree of polycentricity is correlated with smaller high-temperature patches. In 2003, 2010 and 2015, a one-unit increase in POLY was associated with a 0.097- to 0.124-unit decrease in the average area of different high-temperature patches. The findings suggest that an urban polycentric structure is conducive to forming smaller and more fragmented high-temperature patches, which contributes to a uniform LST distribution and exerts positive effects on alleviating urban heat aggregation. This work enriches the research on the ecological performance of urban polycentric structure and provides a preliminary but effective basis for the formulation of polycentric development strategies from an urban surface thermal environment improvement perspective.

The relationship between polycentric urban spatial structure and energy efficiency of cities in China

The relationship between polycentric urban spatial structure and energy efficiency of cities in China

Quantitative Analysis of Urban Polycentric Interaction Using Nighttime Light Data: A Case Study of Shanghai, China

The urban polycentric structure is connected to the economy and enormously impacts socioeconomic development and policies. Unlike traffic data and big geographic data, remote sensing data have shown an accessible way to measure urban spatial interaction. However, most existing studies only focused on the interaction among cities rather than within cities. Meanwhile, the urban spatial interaction, which should be directional, was always expressed as an undirected graph. Therefore, this article developed a network-based radiation model using nighttime light remote sensing data and mapped a directed interaction network (inward and outward direction) among urban centers. Taking the region within the outer ring of Shanghai as an example, the taxi trajectory data were adopted to validate the result with the <i>R</i>² of 0.61. We discovered that: the urban polycentric interaction network is dumbbell-shaped with an east-west development corridor crossing the main center and connecting two main urban center clusters. The in-strength and out-strength interaction of each urban center have a similar distribution. The urban centers with higher in-strength and out-strength are mainly concentrated toward the main center, especially in the east-west direction. At the urban center level, the total inward interaction is slightly higher than the total outward interaction of most urban centers. Spatially, an unbalanced distribution was found. In summary, our proposed method effectively indicates the urban polycentric interaction and is applicable to other regions since it requires no arbitrary parameters and the input data (e.g., nighttime light data) is readily available.

WAYS OF EXPRESSING THE CATEGORY “DEFINITENESS - INDEFINITENESS” IN RUSSIAN, TATAR AND GERMAN LANGUAGES (COMPARATIVE ASPECT)

The purpose of this study is to conduct a comparative typological analysis of the means of expressing the category “Definiteness / Indefiniteness” in German, Tatar and Russian languages and, building on this analysis, to develop a system of exercises that allow to show the specifics of using this category in the compared languages. The relevance of the study is dictated by the practical and theoretical significance of the co-study of different structural languages at school in the process of forming a multilingual student‟s personality. The article analyses the possibilities of a comparative typological method of studying foreign and native languages. Based on this method, a comparative characteristic of the German, Russian and Tatar languages is given in terms of morphological and genealogical classifications. Despite the fact that these languages, according to the presented classifications, are not related, the positive transfer of knowledge and skills, as well as language interference in the co-study of these languages are of great importance. The author considers the category “Definiteness / Indefiniteness” as a functional semantic field having a polycentric structure and combining grammatical, lexical and syntactic means of expression of the category under study. In the absence of a grammatical marker (article in German), lexical means are widely used, it indicates the possibility of expressing the category “Definiteness / Indefiniteness,” especially in Russian and Tatar languages. Among the syntactic ways of expressing the category, the word order with its goal-communicative attitude is distinguished, as well as the intonation in the compared languages. This study contributes to a more effective teaching of German grammar in an audience whose native language is Tatar and (or) Russian. The practical result of the study is a set of exercises demonstrating the possibilities of learning the category “Definiteness / Indefiniteness” using a comparative typological approach.

The urban local centre: from the centrally-planned economy to the capitalist city. The experience of the Ursynów district in Warsaw

The polycentric structure of the city reflects the role of various stakeholders, public and private, in shaping the urban development and life quality. The paper investigates the role of the public and private sector in creation of the local centres in neighbourhoods, hubs concentrating the services and amenities indispensable for modern life. The analysis is based on the case study of the Ursynów district in Warsaw, designed and constructed mainly in the 1980s, but with several infrastructural, housing, and commercial investments realised after 1989. The study encompassed the location of local centres, their functions, and spatial forms. The findings demonstrate that both public and private sectors play intertwined and significant roles for the local centres and create a synergy effect in such areas. The results of the study also show the evolutionary nature of the local centres’ development. The main elements of the design persist, but the market-oriented economy and decentralised democratic institutions allowed them to continue the original plans, while making the local centres more attractive and richer function-wise than it was possible during the centrally-planned period.

The potential of nighttime light remote sensing data to evaluate the development of digital economy: A case study of China at the city level

As one of the new and crucial fields of economic development, the digital economy refers to the economic activities associated with digital technologies and information. The traditional measurement mainly relies on the statistical data, which are regionally specific and labour cost. As an appropriate proxy for socio-economic activities, nighttime light (NTL) remote sensing data was used in this study to explore its potential in estimating the digital economy. Then, the Zipf's law was used to evaluate the growth of the digital economy at the city level. The results show that the total NTL intensity has a logarithmic relationship with the digital economy index and can be estimated for each cities' digital economy growth in China from 2017 to 2020 (R2 ≈ 0.7). An unbalanced distribution and a decentralized polycentric structure of digital economy are found among all cities in China. But the top 100 cities have a relative harmonious development with a better goodness of Zipf's law. Finally, four main incentives behind the digital economy growth were concluded for three stages of the digital economy growth. This study could enrich the understanding of digital economy and have valuable implications for its future growth in China.

The Topodiverse City: Urban Form for Subjective Well-Being

Research is now better than ever able to unveil how urban inhabitants’ movement, behavior and experiences relate to the urban forms in which they take place. Consequently, urban form might increasingly be able to function as a focal point for different strands of research that focus on sustainable urban life, and as a link between research and planning practice through the development of empirically informed design principles. Drawing on literature from urban morphology, complex systems analysis, environmental psychology, and neuroscience, I provide a wide-angle view of how urban form relates to subjective well-being through movement, social and economic activity, experiences and psychological restoration. I propose three principles for urban form that could promote subjective well-being while also mitigating the environmental impact of cities in industrialized societies. The principles revolve around so-called topodiversity, meaning variation across an urban area in spatial conditions that allows subjective well-being to be promoted through several different pathways. The principles together suggest an urban form that I call the topodiverse city. The topodiverse city displays a polycentric structure and is more spatially contained than the sprawling city, yet not as compact as the dense city. I also propose indicators to measure the principles using mostly openly available data and analysis methods, to further research on how urban form can enable urban subjective well-being with low environmental impact.