City regions and polycentric territorial development: Concepts and practice

Abstract

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. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.