Showing papers on "Polycentricity published in 2002"

Agglomeration and Dispersion of High-order Service Employment in the Montreal Metropolitan Region, 1981-96:

Abstract: Much of the recent urban literature on suburban employment centres has neglected the role of high-order services, perhaps the principal component of 'edge cities', in the creation of the evolving multinucleated metropolitan structure. This paper specifically explores the role of high-order services in this process. We use employment by place-of-work data at the census-tract level to examine the changing intrametropolitan geography of employment in four finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) services and eight business services in the Montreal area over the period 1981-96. We find evidence of central business district (CBD) decline in relative, but not absolute, terms. The resulting decentralisation has clearly assumed the form of polycentricity rather than of generalised dispersion. In spite of recent advances in telecommunications technologies, agglomeration economies continue to exert an important impact upon intrametropolitan location.

The Justiciability of Administrative Decisions: A Redundant Concept?

Abstract: The non-justiciability of certain executive decisions is based upon a number of notions including that of 'polycentricity', the unsuitability of certain types of power for review, deference to executive judgment, and the question of the judicially enforceable limits to power. It is argued that the concept is redundant and it is sufficient to consider whether a ground of review, invoked with an appropriate regard for the legalities merits distinction, is available.

The Normative Desirability of Participatory Governance

Abstract: The basic assumption from which the demand to extend public participation in the process of policy design and implementation within the EU is inspired seems to be straightforward, and it comes in two parts. First, the institutional chain of (indirect) democratic legitimacy in a multi-level context is necessarily rather weak and porous. This is not least because the network-driven logic of policy formation crosscuts the logic of representative accountability and thus introduces additional intra- as well as inter-institutional tensions into the European institutional system (see Christiansen 2001). Therefore, one obvious solution to the “democratic deficit” is to draw more systematically on the direct inclusion and involvement of citizens, both individually and collectively. And second, this “participatory recipe” for curing the structural shortcomings of representative institutions within a system characterised by dispersion, polycentricity and fragmentation (von Bogdandy 1999) derives its attractiveness from the assumption that there is a direct and mutually reinforcing link between the virtues of direct participation on the one hand and the efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of policies that emerge under such conditions on the other.

6. Polycentric Urban Structures in Sweden - Conditions and Prospects

Abstract: Polycentricity According to the SPESP, polycentric spatial development has at least two meanings with respect to spatial planning and development at the regional level. The first is as an inter-regional concept with development and transformation dispersed across the EU territory in several growth centres all with the ability to arrest the concentration process currently ongoing across the European territory, and then also to develop dynamic growth areas. At this level analysis is focused on the challenge posed by the development of core regions to which other parts of the European territory are peripheral and dependent. This is particularly prescient with regard to for example the development of the London and Paris regions. The second meaning can be found at the intra-regional level characterised by several urban centres that are connected to each other and not dominated by one dominant centre. Examples of this model are the Rhine-Ruhr and Liverpool-Manchester regions. (Pumain et.al., 2000; BBB, 2001; EC, 2001). A central ingredient of polycentric development is the interconnected nature of towns and built-up areas where urban-rural development is not contradictory but rather, complementary. One of the purposes of stimulating such efforts towards polycentric urban development is an attempt to impede ongoing concentration on a few metropolitan areas where most of the dynamics processes are localised. As was noted in the second report on economic and social cohesion “connections between urban centres, and between these and rural areas, are a major force for economic development” (EC, 2001). There are, however, large differences between development at the European core and that in a sparsely populated country such as Sweden with respect to both mono-centric and polycentric development processes. In respect of polycentric development in Sweden it is primarily at the intra-regional level that this has some relevance, at least if the areas analysed are not the whole country or at the NUTS 2-level. At least for Sweden, even the NUTS 3-level – i.e. counties – is too large in respect of area size, for analysing intra-regional polycentric development.