Road accessibility and articulation of metropolitan spatial structures: the case of Madrid (Spain)

In the last few decades, rapid growth in mobility has facilitated the progressive inclusion of distant places in metropolitan processes, modifying traditional metropolitan areas into polycentric urban structures. The paper proposes that the articulation of metropolitan urban regions presenting a methodology based on three accessibility indicators for road networks, combined and developed into two time scenarios. It is applied in the Madrid Urban Region (Spain) revealing that with a general increase in accessibility over period, the metropolitan core has been reinforced and its influence has expanded adding more cities that have started to compete in terms of accessibility with other spaces adjacent to Madrid. The paper shows how a metropolitan area evolves from central patterns towards more diffused ones, introducing polycentric patterns by the hand of increasing road mobility