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Monocentric or polycentric city? An empirical perspective

Rémi Lemoy

Abstract

Do cities have just one or several centers? Studies performing radial or monocentric analyses of cities are usually criticised by researchers stating that cities are actually polycentric, and this has been well known for a long time. Reversely, when cities are studied independently of any center, other researchers will wonder how the variables of interest evolve with the distance to the center, because this distance is known to be a major determinant at the intra-urban scale. Both monocentric and polycentric formalisms have been introduced centuries (respectively, decades) ago for the study of urban areas, and used both on the empirical and the theoretical side in different disciplines (economics, geography, complex systems, physics...). The present work performs a synthesis of both viewpoints on cities, regarding their use in the literature, and explores with data on European urban areas how some cities considered to be the most polycentric in Europe compare to more standard cities when studied through a combination of radial analysis and scaling laws.

Monocentric or polycentric city? An empirical perspective

Abstract

Do cities have just one or several centers? Studies performing radial or monocentric analyses of cities are usually criticised by researchers stating that cities are actually polycentric, and this has been well known for a long time. Reversely, when cities are studied independently of any center, other researchers will wonder how the variables of interest evolve with the distance to the center, because this distance is known to be a major determinant at the intra-urban scale. Both monocentric and polycentric formalisms have been introduced centuries (respectively, decades) ago for the study of urban areas, and used both on the empirical and the theoretical side in different disciplines (economics, geography, complex systems, physics...). The present work performs a synthesis of both viewpoints on cities, regarding their use in the literature, and explores with data on European urban areas how some cities considered to be the most polycentric in Europe compare to more standard cities when studied through a combination of radial analysis and scaling laws.
Paper Structure (10 sections, 1 equation, 7 figures, 1 table)

This paper contains 10 sections, 1 equation, 7 figures, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. History
  3. Empirics
  4. Models
  5. Radial analysis
  6. Intersection of two neighboring cities
  7. Polycentric analysis
  8. Criticism
  9. Open issues
  10. Summary

Figures (7)

  • Figure 1: Land use map of the Lille region FUAs (France/Belgium). The standard Corine Land Cover color scheme is used. Buffers represent a rescaled radius $r'=50$km around the center. Data from the Cassini map is overlaid, showing cities' extent in the 18th century.
  • Figure 2: Land use map of Marseille and Aix-en-Provence (France). The standard Corine Land Cover color scheme is used. Buffers represent a rescaled radius $r'=50$km around the center. Blue buffers correspond to 2006 data and the black one to 2012. Data from the Cassini map is overlaid, showing cities' extent in the 18th century.
  • Figure 3: Land use map of the Ranstad (the Netherlands). The standard Corine Land Cover color scheme is used. Buffers represent a rescaled radius $r'=50$km around the center.
  • Figure 4: Land use map of the Rhine-Ruhr region (Germany). The standard Corine Land Cover color scheme is used. Buffers represent a rescaled radius $r'=50$km around the center.
  • Figure 5: Estimated parameters of the exponential (top left) and stretched exponential (bottom) fits of artificial land use profiles, displayed as functions of the total population $N$: characteristic distance $l_N$ (top left), stretching exponent $b_N$ (bottom left) and second stretching parameter $\lambda_N$ (bottom right). Cities which might correspond to polycentric urban regions are marked by a white dot. Top right panel: examples of stretched exponential profiles on a semi-logarithmic graph, with different values of the stretching parameters $b$ and $\lambda_N$.
  • ...and 2 more figures