City regions and polycentric territorial development

City regions and polycentric territorial development

This special issue of Urban Research and Practice presents contributions discussing
three closely interrelated themes of polycentricity, city regions and territorial disparities.
The focus on polycentric settlement systems is framed by the normative goal of
sustainable spatially balanced territorial development declared in the European Spatial
Development Perspective (ESDP) and further developed by European Spatial Planning
Observatory Network (ESPON) and the Interreg IIIB programmes. The experience of
the former socialist countries of Central Europe shows that issues of territorial development
discussed under the concept of polycentricity have a long tradition in this
region. Instead of a division of space into exclusive and closed territories with only one
choice structure, which was operationalized under Communism, polycentricity now
offers a plurality of choices for populations and firms within a networked system of
centres. However, we have to bear in mind that displacing the notion of territorial contiguity
with a one-sided preference for networks of settlement nodes and corridors runs
the risk of producing more, rather than less, spatial inequality.

winning doesn't always mean being first, winning means to do better than before

thanks Elii