Decentralization and polycentricity: Spatial changes of employment in Beijing Metropolitan Area, China

Abstract

Decentralization and polycentric spatial structure strategies are important ways to alleviate urban disease in China. However, whether the urban spatial structure is meeting expectations is still unknown. Taking the Beijing Metropolitan Area as a case, the author adopted a non-parametric method to identify the subcenters, then an employment density model was used to analyze the spatial changes of employment and the employment centers’ impacts on the urban spatial structure. The results show that the Beijing Metropolitan Area was undergoing processes of employment decentralization, the monocentric structure was obvious throughout this time, but the polycentric model prevailed. The spatial structure of the Beijing Metropolitan Area was characterized as depicting “all centers aggregation” and the spatial structure of the central district of Beijing can be described as “subcenter agglomeration” between 2004 and 2013. The spatial structure became increasingly polycentric in the Beijing Metropolitan Area, but became more scattered in the central district.