21 research outputs found

    Short trips and central places: The home-school distances in the Flemish primary education system (Belgium)

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    This paper examines the extent to which home-school trip length in northern Belgium is influenced by the spatial distribution of the school sites, and to what extent this distribution contemporarily functions according to propositions of central place theory. Furthermore, from a sustainable mobility perspective, it is evaluated if the primary school network's density supports a daily urban system based on short distances. The results indicate that the overall system's density meets the requirements of a non-motorized system, while the distribution confirms central place mechanisms. The majority of the pupils live within walking or cycling distance from their school, while opportunities exist to further reduce this distance by choosing an alternative school. However, depending on the structure of the concerned settlement, school accessibility varies considerably. Finally, the results suggest that recent increases in school trip length and motorization are mainly caused by non-spatial factors

    Cities as networks within networks of cities: the evolution of the city/firm-duality in the world city network, 2000-2010

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    We explore the temporal evolution of cities and firms (i.e. both modes) in a two-mode intercity corporate network formed by 50 leading advanced producer service firms across 154 cities for the years 2000 and 2010. Drawing upon one-mode network projection and three network centralities, we assess the shifting positions of individual cities and firms in the one-mode intercity and interfirm networks. Major findings include: (1) the intercity network is more stable and hierarchical than the interfirm network; (2) brokerage functions, as captured by betweenness centrality, remain highly uneven for both cities and firms. For example, New York and London’s distinct positions as the world’s leading producer service centres remain intact; and (3) regional and sectoral tendencies are evident in terms of growth rates of centralities

    Flemish Diamond or ABC-Axis? The spatial structure of the Belgian metropolitan area

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    This contribution traces the evolution of the Belgian urban system by adopting a historical taxonomy of agglomeration-economy regimes, and poses the question whether a new centralizing agglomeration-economy regime based on renewed ‘metropolization’ can be observed. Belgium has federalized into three regions during the last decades and different spatial perspectives emerged about how the central metropolitan area crosscuts the regional borders. After placing Belgian metropolization in its historical context, we engage with its contemporary geography. We inquire if the metropolitan area of Belgium is more akin to the ‘Flemish Diamond’, with capital city Brussels as the southernmost node, or whether a spatial pattern reminiscent of the historical ‘Antwerp-Brussels-Charleroi (ABC)-Axis’ is a more adequate description. To answer these questions, we examine the spatial integration of the Belgian labour market utilizing the connectivity field method and a 2010 nationwide travel-to-work data set. Based on this analysis, inferences are drawn about labour market interdependencies between various parts of the urban system. The results indicate that contemporary metropolization in Belgium can be topographically expressed as an area that is more trans-regional than the Flemish Diamond yet more polycentric than an extension of Brussels, thus pointing to renewed economic centralization tendencies at the supra-regional level

    Pacifying Babel’s Tower: A scientometric analysis of polycentricity in urban research

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    It is sometimes claimed that the degree of polycentricity of an urban region influences that region’s competitiveness. However, because of widespread use and policy relevance, the underlying concept of polycentricity has become a ‘stretched concept’ in urban studies. As a result, academic debate on the topic leads to situations reminiscent of Babel’s Tower. This meta-study of the scientific literature in urban studies traces the conceptual stretching of polycentricity using scientometric methods and content analysis. All published studies that either apply the concept directly or cite a work that does, were collected from the Scopus bibliographic database. This resulted in a citation network with over 9000 works and more than 20,000 citations between them. Network analysis and clustering algorithms were used to define the most influential papers in different citation clusters within the network. Subsequently, we employed content analysis to systematically assess the mechanisms associated with the formation of polycentric urban systems in each of these papers. Based on this meta-analysis, we argue that the common categorisation of polycentricity research in intra-urban, inter-urban and inter-regional polycentricity is somewhat misleading. More apt categorisations to understand the origins of polycentricity’s conceptual ambiguity relate to different methodological traditions and geographical contexts in which the research is conducted. Nonetheless, we observe a firm relation across clusters between assessments of polycentricity and different kinds of agglomeration economies. We conclude by proposing a re-conceptualisation of polycentricity based on explicitly acknowledging the variable spatial impact of these different kinds of agglomeration economies

    Planning for agglomeration economies in a polycentric region: Envisioning an efficient metropolitan core area in Flanders

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    To some degree, metropolitan regions owe their existence to the ability to valorize agglomeration economies. The general perception is that agglomeration economies increase with city size, which is why economists tend to propagate urbanization, in this case in the form of metropolization. Contrarily, spatial planners traditionally emphasize the negative consequences of urban growth in terms of liveability, environmental quality, and congestion. Polycentric development models have been proposed as a specific form of metropolization that allow for both agglomeration economies and higher levels of liveability and sustainability. This paper addresses the challenge of how such polycentric development can be achieved in planning practice. We introduce ‘agglomeration potential maps’ that visualize potential locations in a polycentric metropolitan area where positive agglomeration externalities can be optimized. These maps are utilized in the process of developing a new spatial vision for Flanders’ polycentric ‘metropolitan core area’, commonly known as the Flemish Diamond. The spatial vision aspires to determine where predicted future population growth in the metropolitan core area could best be located, while both optimizing positive agglomeration externalities and maintaining its small-scale morphological character. Based on a literature review of optimum urban-size thresholds and our agglomeration potential maps, we document how such maps contributed to developing this spatial vision for the Flemish metropolitan core area

    Planning for agglomeration economies in a polycentric region: Envisioning an efficient metropolitan core area in Flanders

    Get PDF
    To some degree, metropolitan regions owe their existence to the ability to valorize agglomeration economies. The general perception is that agglomeration economies increase with city size, which is why economists tend to propagate urbanization, in this case in the form of metropolization. Contrarily, spatial planners traditionally emphasize the negative consequences of urban growth in terms of liveability, environmental quality, and congestion. Polycentric development models have been proposed as a specific form of metropolization that allow for both agglomeration economies and higher levels of liveability and sustainability. This paper addresses the challenge of how such polycentric development can be achieved in planning practice. We introduce ‘agglomeration potential maps’ that visualize potential locations in a polycentric metropolitan area where positive agglomeration externalities can be optimized. These maps are utilized in the process of developing a new spatial vision for Flanders’ polycentric ‘metropolitan core area’, commonly known as the Flemish Diamond. The spatial vision aspires to determine where predicted future population growth in the metropolitan core area could best be located, while both optimizing positive agglomeration externalities and maintaining its small-scale morphological character. Based on a literature review of optimum urban-size thresholds and our agglomeration potential maps, we document how such maps contributed to developing this spatial vision for the Flemish metropolitan core area

    Pathways of change: shifting connectivities in the world city network, 2000-08

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    This is an empirical paper that measures and interprets changes in intercity relations at the global scale in the period 2000-08. It draws on the network model devised by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) research group to measure global connectivities for 132 cities across the world in 2000 and 2008. The measurements for both years are adjusted so that a coherent set of services/cities is used. A range of statistical techniques is used to explore these changes at the city level and the regional scale. The most notable changes are: the general rise of connectivity in the world city network; the loss of global connectivity of US and Sub-Saharan African cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Miami in particular); and, the gain in global connectivity of south Asian, Chinese and eastern European cities (Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow in particular)

    The global city

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    The concept of the “global city” was invented in the 1990s by Saskia Sassen to describe a new type of city that specialized in transnational relations. Initially, the focus was on London, New York, and Tokyo, but the idea was soon generalized by the sociologist Manuel Castells to include a broader range of cities that formed the nodes and hubs in his interpretation of contemporary society as a “network society.” This notion was then expanded to suggest the existence of a “world city network,” emphasizing the global scope of the services offered by contemporary cities. What we now call globalization originated from the combining of the computer and communication industries in the 1970s, which enabled new levels of worldwide contact and organization. This “shrinking” of the world has had profound implications economically, politically, and culturally. One unforeseen effect has been the increasing importance of cities. Although it was initially thought that globalization would reduce the functional importance of cities, the increased worldwide dispersal of human activities has in fact generated new organizational demands to manage, service, and generally facilitate the intensification of global relations

    Distribution of daily commuting during the evening rush hour.

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    <p>Distribution of daily commuting during the evening rush hour.</p

    Distribution of road users by home locations. T

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    <p>he distribution of home locations located in five transport analysis zones (TAZ, see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0049171#pone-0049171-g002" target="_blank">Figure 2</a>) is shown separately for the annual overall distribution and during the evening rush hour on Friday’s and on other working days.</p
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