Polycentric Structures Research Articles

Climate finance governance: Fit for purpose?

AbstractThis article consists of a critical review of the conceptual scholarship on the governance of climate finance and includes an overview of the institutional arrangements and governance logics that provide climate finance. New decentralized, polycentric structures allow for climate finance to more effectively reach the sub‐ and non‐state actors most directly implementing climate change governance. However, the expansion of climate finance into market‐inflected forms of blended finance, as well as debt‐based financing, express a neoliberal logic that shifts power to market actors. This may challenge the efficacy of climate finance. We suggest that further research is needed on polycentric systems in climate finance, since an apparent expansion in the diversity of providers is also accompanied by a counter‐intuitive concentration of decision‐making power with financial fund managers. We join others in suggesting that the weight of scholarship advocates for a strong return to public authored finance and governance, under the auspices of Green New Deal programs and more widely.This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance

Spatial Data Requirements for Metropolitan Spatial Planning in South Australia: Challenges for Evidence-informed Policy-making and Monitoring

ABSTRACT Comprehensive spatial plans require a wide range of high quality spatial data, but planning requirements are not always considered in the increasing number of spatial data initiatives. This paper presents a framework for systematically analysing the availability and quality of spatial datasets in urban planning, and applies this to the example of the metropolitan strategy for Greater Adelaide, South Australia. The findings reveal significant gaps in important spatial data that are publicly available. This is especially concerning given the need to better understand integrated and multi-scalar planning policies such as for mixed use developments and polycentric urban structures.

Identifying subcenters with a nonparametric method and ubiquitous point-of-interest data: A case study of 284 Chinese cities

Urban spatial structure, which is primarily defined as the spatial distribution of employment and residences, has been of lasting interest to urban economists, geographers, and planners for good reason. This paper proposes a nonparametric method that combines the Jenks natural break method and the Moran’s I to identify a city’s polycentric structure using point-of-interest density. Specifically, a polycentric city consists of one main center and at least one subcenter. A qualified (sub)center should have a significantly higher density of human activity than its immediate surroundings (locally high) and a relatively higher density than all the other subareas in the city (globally high). Treating Chinese cities as the subject, we ultimately identified 70 cities with polycentric structures from 284 prefecture-level cities in China. In addition, regression analyses were conducted to reveal the predictors of polycentricity among the subjects. The regression results indicate that the total population, GDP, average wage, and urban land area of a city all significantly predict polycentricity. As a whole, this paper provides an alternative and transferrable method for identifying main centers and subcenters across cities and to reveal common predictors of polycentricity. The proposed method avoids some of the potential problems in the conventional approach, such as the arbitrariness of thres hold. setting and sensitivity to spatial scales. It can also be replicated rather conveniently, as its input data, such as point-of-interest data, are widely available to the public and the data’s validity can be efficiently checked by field trips or other traditional data sources, such as land-use maps or censuses.

Spatial structure and subjective well-being in North-West Europe

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between regions’ spatial organization and subjective well-being in North-West Europe. Combining data on life satisfaction with data on the spatial structure of regions, we find that the degree of polycentricism is positively associated and dispersion is negatively associated with life satisfaction. At the same time, the results indicate that in more dispersed regions, people experience more positive effects of polycentric structures than in more centralized regions, while residents of more urbanized polycentric regions report lower levels of life satisfaction compared with residents of less urbanized polycentric regions. Likewise, the findings suggest that urban residents living in polycentric regions are less satisfied compared with their rural counterparts.

Detecting and Visualizing the Communities of Innovation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration Based on the Patent Cooperation Network

For a deep understanding of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) collaborative innovation, we detected and visualized the communities of innovation in BTH Urban Agglomeration based on the patent cooperation network. China Patent Database was connected with Business Registration Database and the Tianyan Check to achieve the geographical information of organizational innovators. Spinglass algorithm was applied and ultimately 12 communities of innovation were detected. Based on the different structure characteristics, we further clustered the 12 communities into four typical structures that are hierarchical, single-center, polycentric, and flat structures. The hierarchical structure is usually large in scale and the cooperative intensity is relatively high. Single-center structure has a center with a high proportion of centrality and the cooperative intensity is relatively low. Polycentric structure has multiple centers with similar proportions of centrality. Flat structure is usually small in scale and has no obvious network center. In the patent cooperative network of BTH Urban Agglomeration, universities and state-owned enterprises occupied the centers and acted important roles to connect other organizations. Some communities of innovation showed significant industry characteristics, mainly involving six industry fields that are electric power, construction, petroleum, metallurgy and materials, municipal transportation, and railway. From the geographical perspective, some communities manifested local attributes and some demonstrated cooperation between regions. Beijing was the center of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei patent cooperation network. Compared with the pair of Beijing-Tianjin and the pair of Beijing-Hebei, Tianjin and Hebei were not closely connected. In the future, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei collaborative innovation should strengthen cooperation between Tianjin and Hebei.

The historical aspects of polycentric urban development on the example of Barcelona

The article concerns the problems of implementation of the modern urban planning methods and principles in the context of historical process of urbanization. Network and polycentric urban planning actively developed in 19th century and implied the equal distribution of public facilities and communications, the unification of the urban space with the connecting axes, the integration of transport and engineering infrastructure. The purpose of the article is to consider the urban planning strategies of Barcelona’s renovation of 19th centuries and to define it’s correspondence to the tasks of modern urban development. The relevance of the topic is determined by it’s connection with problems of modern growth-oriented urban structures. The article is based on complex and system theoretical approach. Theoretical analysis of urban planning strategies and urban space development is implemented to reveal the most perspective and progressive tendencies of urban planning, which anticipated the modern principles of urban space formation. The results of the work include the characteristic of polycentric Urban structures on the example of Barcelona, the determination of it’s key features. The review of researches, dedicated to the history of urban planning and the problems of modern urban planning allows to make the conclusions about the advantages of polycentric urban planing and it’s perspectives in future development of the cities.

ACCESS CONTROL IN THE POLYCENTRIC PLANNING STRUCTURES

The article focuses on the study of complex polycentric planning structures that are most characteristic of large multifunctional buildings. The question of the spatial typology of multifunctional public buildings is studied, various planning principles of access restriction are briefly considered. The planning system can be open to the external urban environment, i.e. extroverted, and closed, based on internal control, i.e. introverted, and also develop as a traditional system of barriers. The author describes the relationship between the protection and the permeability of spaces, including visual and physical. The issue of ensuring security and access control in such megastructures is investigated, it is concluded that their space-planning organization is built as a system of barriers dividing the building spaces into different access levels, which is provided by a communication framework.

Measuring polycentric structures of megaregions in China: Linking morphological and functional dimensions

The idea of megaregions, which focuses on polycentricity, competitiveness, and integration attracts much attention in research and policy. China has used megaregions as a normative governance framework that leverages polycentric regional development for balancing economic competitiveness and spatial development. This paper explores to what extent these megaregions actually reveal polycentric versus monocentric structures. The analysis demonstrates a divergence between the morphological and functional organization of China’s megaregions. Five types of megaregions are identified as per the relationships between the morphological and functional dimensions. Functionally, the Pearl River Delta, Shandong Peninsula, and Yangtze River Delta are among the most polycentric megaregions. The majority of others, even where morphologically polycentric, do not exhibit high degrees of functional polycentricity. The study demonstrates a problematic nature of megaregions as a governance agenda for regional polycentricity. It argues that if China genuinely wants to achieve greater levels of polycentricity and spatial cohesion, differentiated policies should be implemented for megaregions.

Polycentricity and adaptive governance of transboundary marine socio-ecological systems

Transboundary marine socio-ecological systems (SESs) are complex and dynamic systems. Enhancing the sustainability of such systems requires adaptive governance supported by polycentric structures. However, adaptive governance of marine SESs across national boundaries can be challenging, as significant differences in institutional arrangements for resource management and adaptive governance capabilities may exist. The limitations of various institutional arrangements and the challenges of adaptive governance across borders are still poorly understood. We offer a comparative study of two marine co-management systems, in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, which are bound by different legislative environments to elucidate how institutions might limit or enable adaptive governance at the local and transboundary scale. The legislative environment is characterized based on a review of the literature. The structural properties of the co-management systems are examined for evidence of polycentricity using social network analysis. Across the different co-management contexts, we discover similar and distinct institutional opportunities and challenges for adaptive governance. Both co-management regimes foster the participation of diverse actors and multiple interactions. However, both show strong sectoral tendencies and high centrality of government, which can hinder adaptive governance. There are more autonomous decision units in Tanzania's co-management network, hence a more robust social context for polycentricism compared to Kenya. A shift towards enhanced polycentricity to foster adaptive governance of the Kenya-Tanzania transboundary marine SES will require policy frameworks that enhance cross-sectoral integration and create opportunities for multi-stakeholder bridging.

Identification of Polycentric Cities in China Based on NPP-VIIRS Nighttime Light Data

Nighttime light data play an important role in the research on cities, while the urban centers over a large spatial scale are still far from clearly understood. Aiming at the current challenges in monitoring the spatial structure of cities using nighttime light data, this paper proposes a new method for identifying urban centers for massive cities at the large spatial scale based on the brightness information captured by the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (NPP-VIIRS) sensor. Based on the method for extracting the peak point based on digital elevation model (DEM) data in terrain analysis, the maximum neighborhood and difference algorithms were applied to the NPP-VIIRS data to extract the pixels with the peak nighttime light intensity to identify the potential locations of urban centers. The results show 7239 urban centers in 2200 cities in China in 2017, with an average of 3.3 urban centers per city. Approximately 68% of the cities had significant polycentric structures. The developed method in this paper is useful for identifying the urban centers and can provide the reference to the city planning and construction.

Investigating integrated urbanism in Chinese edge cities: the case of Yizhuang Development Area

Purpose China’s capital Beijing is a special case of fast urbanization and monocentric development, resulting in major efforts to implement polycentric structures. The purpose of this paper is thus centered on understanding the phenomenon of an established edge city and the level of integration regarding all daily activities of its residents. Design/methodology/approach Since the end of the 20th century, Chinese cities have been witnessing rapid urban growth and expansion. One of the major planning challenges has been the implementation of polycentric urban structures to enforce integrated urbanism and thus less dependency on commuting to few main commercial and business centers. The methodological approach includes various mapping efforts and field studies to investigate the currently produced urban landscape and highlight the rather challenging reality of edge cities being produced in a very short period of time. Findings This paper explores one of Beijing’s biggest edge cities, known as the Yizhuang Development Area, which was created by an investment initiative of the municipal government. The city has been developed with a strong focus on functional planning aspects rather than a dynamic diversification of walkable districts with emerging identities. Originality/value This investigation attempts to add some new insights into the contemporary urbanism in Chinese edge cities and the general problem of missing urban design initiatives to enhance the overall urban quality of diversity and social interaction.

Measures of labour market accessibility. What can we learn from observed commuting patterns?

It is well known that measures of labour market accessibility explains spatial variation in housing prices even in markets with polycentric labour market structures. This paper examines whether data on observed commuting patterns can replace or supplement gravity-based measures representing the commuting potential at specific locations. We use data from a region in Western Norway,and we find that measures based on observed commuting flows and commuting time cannot replace a gravity-based measure of labour market accessibility. Based on, inter alia, the spatial Durbin estimator we find that measures of observed commuting flows increase the explanatory power of a hedonic house price model.

Effects of the polycentric spatial structures of Chinese city regions on CO2 concentrations

The environmental sustainability of polycentric spatial structures in urban planning must be evaluated to ensure the sustainable development of city regions. Given the mixed conclusions of previous studies, as well as the lack of information on reliable methods of assessment and quantifiable mechanisms, a three-year dataset for prefecture-level and above city regions in China and spatial econometric models were used to examine the relationship between regional polycentricity and CO2 concentrations. After robust testing, we confirmed that polycentric structures decrease the mean CO2 concentrations of city regions, significantly reducing CO2 concentrations in primary city centers and mildly increasing those in city subcenters. Further quantitative analyses of the mechanisms underlying these patterns revealed that the CO2-reduction effect of polycentric structures is due to the balancing of reductions in commuting duration, transference of industrial CO2 to neighboring areas, and an increase in household CO2 emissions.

Big spatial data for urban and environmental sustainability

ABSTRACT Eighty percent of big data are associated with spatial information, and thus are Big Spatial Data (BSD). BSD provides new and great opportunities to rework problems in urban and environmental sustainability with advanced BSD analytics. To fully leverage the advantages of BSD, it is integrated with conventional data (e.g. remote sensing images) and improved methods are developed. This paper introduces four case studies: (1) Detection of polycentric urban structures; (2) Evaluation of urban vibrancy; (3) Estimation of population exposure to PM2.5; and (4) Urban land-use classification via deep learning. The results provide evidence that integrated methods can harness the advantages of both traditional data and BSD. Meanwhile, they can also improve the effectiveness of big data itself. Finally, this study makes three key recommendations for the development of BSD with regards to data fusion, data and predicting analytics, and theoretical modeling.

Equilibrium refinement for a model of non-monocentric internal structures of cities: A potential game approach

Using the theory of potential games, this paper addresses the emergence of polycentric structures in cities that result from trade-offs between agglomeration economies and congestion effects. We consider a model that explains the formation of multiple business centers in cities as an equilibrium outcome under the presence of households' commuting costs and positive technological externalities between firms. We show that the model is a large-population (non-atomic) potential game. To elucidate properties of stable spatial equilibria in the model, we consider local and global maximizations of the potential function, which are known to correspond to various equilibrium refinement criteria. We find that (i) the formation of business centers (agglomeration of firms) is possible only when households' commuting costs are sufficiently low and that (ii) the size (number) of business centers increases (decreases) monotonically as communication between firms becomes easier.

Revealing deep semantic commercial patterns: Insights from urban landscape depiction

Commercial functions play a significant role in economic growth and sustainable development. Influenced by socioeconomic changes which were investigated based on commercial behaviours using big geo-data, urban environment shows polycentric structures and further leads to more complex commercial landscapes. Thus, research considered environmental consequences of urban growth to better understand the commercialization process. However, only general commercial areas or certain commercial retail locations were investigated with the effects of urban environmental landscapes in existing studies. The decomposition of the commercial patterns such as accommodation and catering functions remains undiscussed. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a framework to decompose commercial patterns based on insight from different urban landscapes. First, we depict urban landscapes using spatial metrics, including the density of points of interest (POIs), percentage of landscape of buildings, landscape shape index of buildings and density of roads. Then, we examine the spatial distribution of the decomposed commercial patterns by delineating potential deep semantic topics. Finally, a structural equation model is utilised to determine the relations among urban landscapes and commercial patterns. The results show that four types of urban landscapes exhibit different spatial patterns, revealing various perspectives of commercial characteristics. Meanwhile, the decomposed commercial patterns, including those for catering and accommodation functions, display a heterogeneous distribution. These commercial patterns are directly affected by various configurations of buildings, POIs and roads. On this basis, suggestions are offered to improve commercial pattern development, including integrating urban landscape construction, organising the commercial pattern distribution and enhancing the harmony between the urban environment and commercial land uses.

Detecting Urban Polycentric Structure from POI Data

It is meaningful to analyze urban spatial structure by identifying urban subcenters, and many methods of doing so have been proposed in the published literature. Although these methods are widely applied, they exhibit obvious shortcomings that limit their further application. Therefore, it is of great value to propose a new urban subcenter identification method that can overcome these shortcomings. In this paper, we propose the density contour tree (DCT) method for detecting urban polycentric structures and their spatial distributions. Conceptually, this method is based on an analogy between urban spatial structure and terrain. The point-of-interest (POI) density is visualized as a continuous mathematical surface representing the urban terrain. Peaks represent the regions of the most frequent human activity, valleys represent regions with small population densities in the city, and slopes represent spatial changes in urban land-use intensity. Using this method, we have detected the urban “polycentric” structure of Beijing and determined the corresponding spatial relationships. In addition, several important properties of the urban centers have been identified. For example, Beijing has a typical urban polycentric structure with an urban center area accounting for 5.9% of the total urban area, and most of the urban centers in Beijing serve comprehensive functions. In general, the method and the results can serve as references for the later research on analyzing urban structure.

How sensitive are measures of polycentricity to the choice of ‘centres’? A methodological and empirical exploration

In the literature dealing with measuring ‘urban polycentricity’, relatively little attention has been paid to the identification of what constitutes an ‘urban centre’. In this paper, we assess the sensitivity of polycentricity measures to one particular aspect of this identification: using the case of ‘polycentric urban regions’, we empirically examine the sensitivity of the ‘level’ of polycentricity to the number of cities included in the analysis. Using a two-mode firm–city data source, we do so by stepwise measuring the polycentricity of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) as cities are added to the analysis. This measurement of ‘stepwise polycentricity’ is benchmarked against an ideal typical urban system with a rank-size distribution. The results suggest that the measure of polycentricity is indeed highly sensitive to the choice of the number of cities, so that the alleged level of polycentricity is contingent on the choice of a cut-off point. We propose that the analysis of the sensitivity of polycentricity can help researchers to (1) investigate the different role of cities in shaping polycentric structures of urban regions, and (2) better identify mono- or polycentric structures of urban regions. Analyses of trends in the ‘stepwise polycentricity’ of the YRD and seven other urban regions along the Yangtze River Economic Belt serve to illustrate.

How Does Polycentric Urban Form Affect Urban Commuting? Quantitative Measurement Using Geographical Big Data of 100 Cities in China

The relationship between polycentric urban form and urban commuting has been widely debated in Western academic circles. However, qualitative and quantitative studies have not reached a unified conclusion. The evolution of urban form in China is remarkably different from that of developed Western countries. Many Chinese cities have begun using polycentric structures as their future development strategies. This study quantitatively measures whether polycentric urban form can improve commuting efficiency in China by using traditional statistics and emerging geographic big data. We use the polycentric index (PI) as the dependent variable and the congestion delay index (CDI) and mean traffic speed (MTS) as the main independent variables. Control variables include urban morphological space compactness (CT), number of private cars per thousand people (PC), number of buses per thousand (PB), urban road area per capita (PUA) and urban population density (PD). Regression models are employed to detect the relationships among the variables. The main research conclusions are as follows: (1) A high degree of PI results in low CDI and fast MTS; (2) a compact spatial form increases the impact of polycentricity on commuting efficiency; (3) maturity road infrastructure is an important measure to promote urban commuting under a polycentric urban form; and (4) the order of effect magnitude of polycentricity on MTS is PD > PC > CT > PUA > PB; on CDI, PD > PC > PB > CT > PUA. The results can be used in examining whether the current polycentric urban pattern planning in China’s cities can effectively improve commuting efficiency. They also provide a reference for the healthy development of China’s urban space and policy formulation of subsequent urban planning.

Integrating parametric and non-parametric multivariate analysis of urban growth and commuting patterns in a European metropolitan area

Mono-centric regions have experienced a progressive transformation towards polycentric structures. Transition to discontinuous and dispersed spatial configurations was particularly evident in formerly compact and dense European cities, as a result of increasingly complex commuting patterns. Under the hypothesis that central locations have a balanced rate of resident population to internal workers and attract workers from neighbouring places, a multivariate analysis of commuting patterns may reveal latent transformations of compact, mono-centric cities towards polycentrism and settlement scattering. A more comprehensive understanding of the intimate nature and implications of urban transitions taking place in the last decades in Athens (Greece), a representative metropolitan region in southern Europe, was carried out using census data analyzed through a framework integrating descriptive statistics and mapping, multivariate exploratory data analysis, non-parametric inference and regression models. The analytical framework was proposed with the aim to assess commuting patterns vis a vis urban hierarchy in a context of (more or less) de-centralized growth. Empirical results for the study area indicate the persistence of a bi-centric spatial structure gravitating on the central cities of Athens and Piraeus, with early formation of employment sub-centres and local-scale alterations of the mono-centric scheme as a result of discontinuous urban expansion. Exurban development was associated with the formation of self-contained sub-centres with an increasing proportion of workers in total resident population.