Showing papers on "Polycentricity published in 2012"

Form Follows Function? Linking Morphological and Functional Polycentricity:

Abstract: Empirical research establishing the costs and benefits that can be associated with polycentric urban systems is often called for but rather thin on the ground. In part, this is due to the persistence of what appear to be two analytically distinct approaches in understanding and measuring polycentricity: a morphological approach centring on nodal features and a functional approach focused on the relations between centres. Informed by the oft-overlooked but rich heritage of urban systems research, this paper presents a general theoretical framework that links both approaches and discusses the way both can be measured and compared in a coherent manner. Using the Netherlands as a test case, it is demonstrated that most regions tend to be more morphologically polycentric than functionally polycentric. The difference is largely explained by the size, external connectivity and degree of self-sufficiency of a region’s principal centre.

Polycentricity: From Polanyi to Ostrom, and Beyond

Abstract: The article overviews and elaborates the concept of polycentricity, defined as a structural feature of social systems of many decision centers having limited and autonomous prerogatives and operating under an overarching set of rules. The article starts by introducing the concept as it was advanced by Michael Polanyi and developed by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It continues introducing possible instances of polycentricity as well as related notions, as part of an attempt to further elaborate the concept through a concept design approach that systematically applies the logic of necessary and sufficient conditions. The article concludes by arguing that the polycentricity conceptual framework is not only a robust analytical structure for the study of complex social phenomena, but is also a challenging method of drawing non-ad hoc analogies between different types of self-organizing complex social systems.

Polycentric governance of multifunctional forested landscapes

Abstract: Human-induced causes of forest change occur at multiple scales. Yet, most governance mechanisms are designed at a single level – whether international, national, regional or local – and do not provide effective solutions for the overarching challenge of forest governance. Efforts to “decentralize” governmental arrangements frequently do not recognize the importance of complex, polycentric arrangements and are based on a presumption of a single government at one level taking charge of a policy arena, often ignoring the existence of many vibrant self-governed institutions. Polycentric institutions provide a useful framework for governance, enabling aspects of preferred solutions to be used together in efforts to protect the long-term sustainability of diverse forested social-ecological systems. By considering the interaction between actors at different levels of governance, polycentricity contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the variation in diverse governance outcomes in the management of common-pool resources based on the needs and interests of citizens and the complexity of resources and governance systems at local, regional, national, and global levels. In this paper, we discuss challenges to polycentricity such as the matching of the boundaries of those who benefit, those who contribute with the boundary of the resource. We describe some approaches that have been effectively utilized to address these challenges in forests in various parts of the world. We also provide a brief overview of how the concept of polycentricity helps in the analysis of climate change and the closely related international effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through degradation and deforestation (REDD).

Reflections on Vincent Ostrom, Public Administration, and Polycentricity

Abstract: Among Vincent Ostrom's many contributions to the study of public administration, policy, and political science, the concept of polycentricity remains his single most important legacy. This essay locates the origins of this concept in Ostrom's early research on resource management in the Western United States and demonstrates its continuing influence throughout The Intellectual Crisis in Public Administration, The Political Theory of a Compound Republic, and his other major publications. Although typically pigeonholed within the confines of the public choice tradition, Ostrom's body of work should be widely appreciated as an early statement of the critical importance of network forms of governance in democratic societies.

Functional Polycentricity: Examining Metropolitan Spatial Structure through the Connectivity of Urban Sub-centres

Abstract: A shift from monocentric cities to increasingly polycentric urban regions has been widely recognised in recent research literature. Although polycentricity in general refers to the existence of sev...

Questioning Polycentric Development and its Effects. Issues of Definition and Measurement for the Italian NUTS-2 Regions

Abstract: Polycentric development is a widely-used term both in academic research and in the normative agenda. However, its theoretical foundations and economic implications are still unknown and the concept of polycentricity still does not have a shared definition, or a shared measurement method. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly polycentricity is defined and measured at a NUTS 2 regional level, by comparing functional and morphological methods. Secondly, in the light of the role assigned to polycentric development in terms of policy, the paper investigates the relationships between the degree of regional polycentricity and the key economic variables of performance – namely competitiveness, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. The main finding was that functional and morphological methods led to similar results. In addition, a correlation was found between polycentricity and a more unequal income distribution and a higher level of productivity, especially when polycentricity was measured in functional terms. No stable correlations were found between polycentricity and measures of environmental sustainability, such as land consumption and greenhouse emissions.

Judging Social Rights

Abstract: 1. Aims and methods Part I. The Case for Constitutional Social Rights: 2. The case for social rights 3. The value of courts in light of the alternatives 4. A basic interpretive approach Part II. A Theory of Judicial Restraint: 5. Institutional approaches to judicial restraint 6. Democratic legitimacy 7. Polycentricity 8. Expertise 9. Flexibility Part III. Incrementalism: 10. Incrementalism as a general theme.

Strangers in our midst: the usefulness of exploring polycentricity

Abstract: The existence and persistence of cities provide prima facie evidence of agglomeration economies, but do little to inform our understanding of the specific nature of forces that induce the concentration of economic activity, nor the spatial scale at which they occur. Though the theoretical literature on conceptualizes these forces without specific geographic scale, the empirical literature largely treats them as working mainly at the metropolitan level. We argue that agglomeration may work at different spatial scales. There is now extensive evidence that metropolitan areas are polycentric, with a significant portion of employment clustered in employment centers outside the CBD. This provides basic evidence of net agglomeration benefits at the sub-metropolitan level. We explore theories of agglomeration and consider how they may explain the presence, location, characteristics, and growth of employment centers. We illustrate the usefulness of exploring polycentricity with a case study of the Los Angeles region. Our understanding of agglomeration economies can be enriched by investigating the nature of employment centers and the forces that produce and sustain them.

The Structural Characteristics of Global Law for the 21st Century: Fracture, Fluidity, Permeability, and Polycentricity

Abstract: Global law can be understood as the systematization of anarchy, as the management of a loosely intertwined universe of autonomous governance frameworks operating dynamically across borders and grounded in functional differentiation among governance communities. More conventionally, global law can be defined as the law of non-state governance systems. Global law posits a stable universe of objects of regulation around which governance systems multiply, the inverse of the traditional approach to law grounded on the presumption of a dynamic population bound to static and stable systems. The essay considers the structure of global law in this context, understood as an amalgamation of four fundamental characteristics that together define a new order in form that is, in some respects, the antithesis of the orderliness and unity of the law-state system it will displace (though not erase). These four fundamental characteristics—fracture, fluidity, permeability, and polycentricity—comprise the fundamental structure of global law. These also serve as the structural foundations of its constitutional element, its substantive element, and its process element. The essay considers each in turn in the construction of global law.

Governing International Rivers: Polycentric Politics in the Mekong and the Rhine

Abstract: Contents: 1. Governance and International Rivers 2. Polycentricity of World Politics 3. Institutional Evolution in the Mekong and the Rhine 4. Multilayer Environmental Governance in the Rhine 5. Influence of Non-state Actors in Governance of the Rhine 6. Issues, Interests and Actors in the Pak Mun Dam Project 7. Influence of Non-state Actors on Pak Mun Dam 8. Polycentric Environmental Governance References Index

El policentrismo en Chile: medición exploratoria para el sistema de ciudades de las regiones de La Araucanía, de Los Ríos y de Los Lagos

Abstract: Polycentricity is a concept that has gained strength in recent years as one of the European territorial policy strategic objectives, which aims to promote more balanced and cohesive spaces. Its defi nition and measurement has generated much debate in the international scientifi c community, in which Chile has been lagging. This publication aims to defi ne the concept of polycentricity, its main aspects and to propose some improvements in the measurement methods were used. For this purpose, it has been applied a theoretical measurement of the level of polycentricity within three regions of southern Chile: la Araucania, los Rios and los Lagos. The results suggest the existence of a lower middle polycentricity as a whole system and a low level of polycentric in each region.

Labour and Geography in Ireland, 2006 Evaluating the National Spatial Strategy for Ireland 2002 - 2020: People, Places and Potential

Abstract: This Ph.D. identifies the spatial structures associated with Ireland’s economic geography through an analysis of travel-to-work patterns. In doing so it applies, within the Irish context, novel techniques to identify local labour market areas using data that, heretofore, were unavailable to researchers in Ireland, i.e. detailed spatial interaction data describing the journey to work. The primary aim of this thesis is to address a research lacuna concerning labour and labour market areas within the field of economic geography in Ireland. This research augments our understanding of the spatial structure of Ireland’s economy through the identification of local labour market areas and elucidates the geographies of who works where and places these within an international context. This, in turn, facilitates a detailed evaluation of Ireland’s ‘National Spatial Strategy 2002 – 2020: People, Places and Potential’ (NSS). The content of this strategy raises fundamental geographic questions concerning who lives where, where they work and the spatial structure of those functional areas associated with cities and towns in Ireland. The thesis explores these issues through the dual conceptual lenses of geographies of labour and labour geographies. In additional to these theoretical considerations, the research is guided by three broad objectives: a) the identification of local labour market areas, b) to enhance the effectiveness of spatial policies in Ireland concerned with economic development in general and those affecting labour processes in particular by critically engaging with the concept of polycentricity, and c) to empirically evaluate selected spatial concepts that are central to the NSS. In addressing these objectives the thesis makes a significant contribution to both economic geography and spatial planning. It provides a comprehensive evaluation of the NSS and provides new insights into the geography of local labour market areas in Ireland, whilst also providing a methodology that overcomes the central criticism of the technique used in previous studies identifying labour market areas.

Is Pennine England becoming more Polycentric or more Centripetal? An Analysis of Commuting Flows in a Transforming Industrial Region, 1981-2001

Abstract: This paper examines census-derived commuting data for the world’s earliest major urbanindustrial region, now home to 10 million people. Owing its origins to water power from the Pennine rivers, this region now comprises many closely-spaced cities and towns whose distinct identities have been eroded through the loss of their local industrial specialisms and the long-term growth in mobility. It contains five of the city regions identified by ‘The Northern Way’, a policy initiative designed as part of the Labour government’s 2004 Sustainable Cities Plan for stimulating agglomeration economies across the wider region, with a more polycentric structure being seen as a positive contribution to this development. The paper tests how far this part of Northern England may be evolving into a single polycentric mega-city region, using commuting data from the 1981, 1991 and 2001 Censuses. Two hypotheses are tested; namely, that there is increasing polycentricity within each of the five city regions and that there is increasing linkage between the five city regions. With gravity modelling removing the effects of generic reductions in distance deterrence, evidence is found of trends towards greater polycentricity at both these scales of analysis, albeit modest in scale: there has been some reduction in the five cities’ attraction of commuters living in the other parts of their city regions and the boundaries between the city regions have become somewhat more permeable over time.

Em busca de uma definição de policentrismo urbano para as metrópoles brasileiras

Abstract: Polycentricity has an extensive and complex meaning that diverges depending on the spatial, social, economic and historical perspective of the research. This complexity generates multiple definitions of this subject, since the context in which an urban polycentric system is situated influences its profile, providing an unclear explanation of this notion. This paper examines theconception of polycentrism in its larger sense, reviewing the literature. This theoretical framework presents the theme in a comprehensive way, seeking a general definition for the context of Brazilian metropolis. The article also looks into the polycentrism relevance in the country’s context, classifying the Brazilian urban areas into Medium-Sized City, Metropolitan Region, and Inter-Metropolitan Region. These typologies are characterized in order to build a useful definition of polycentrism in the Brazilian context.

Globalizing Polycentricity in Istanbul: Mamdani-Type Fuzzy Rule-Based Model of CBD Office Space Rents

Abstract: For some two millennia Istanbul has been one of the world's greatest cities, and is today classified as an "Alpha-" world city in the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) group's 2010 rankings. Istanbul is an emerging global city that is facilitating Turkey's transnational integration into the global economy, and as of June 2009 the city had the second largest office stock among all Southeast European countries. This paper investigates the determinants of office rent levels in the city's Central Business District (CBD) and the spatial variation of rents in a polycentric metropolis. The paper uses a stepwise regression and a Mamdani-type fuzzy rule-based model to estimate office space rents, and compares empirical results with those of a conventional OLS regression analysis. Rents are driven not only by physical characteristics and locational services, but also the terms of lease contracts. New CBD locations that command the highest rents on spacious, high-rise office spaces with comparatively few employees conform well with contemporary accounts of world-city financial districts, and confirm the significance of urban office infrastructures for globally oriented financial elites beyond the familiar roster of Global North world cities. The traditional center retains the core purpose identified nearly a century ago, in Marshall's analysis of centralization during the most vibrant period of the industrial age. Despite all the transformations of transnational urbanist polycentricity, the traditional CBD is still the place with the most diverse mix of activities, and the greatest variation in rents.

Property Taxes and Polycentricity

Abstract: Elinor and Vincent Ostrom have dedicated their professional careers to understanding polycentric forms of public administration. From a public finance perspective, the Ostrom-polycentric system represents a number of challenges. America’s answer to the public financing of polycentric public administration has been the real property tax, which has characteristics that are unique among taxes. This essay describes these unique characteristics as they pertain to the permissibility of multiple, decentralized, and overlapping polycentric nodes of public administration that each maintain a financial independence necessary for local autonomy. We conclude that reforms aimed at eliminating the property tax will ultimately undermine polycentric public administration as well.

Polycentricity: From Polanyi to Ostrom, and Beyond

Abstract: The article overviews and elaborates the concept of polycentricity, defined as a structural feature of social systems of many decision centers having limited and autonomous prerogatives and operating under an overarching set of rules. The article starts by introducing the concept as it was advanced by Michael Polanyi and developed by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It continues introducing possible instances of polycentricity as well as related notions, as part of an attempt to further elaborate the concept through a concept design approach that systematically applies the logic of necessary and sufficient conditions. The article concludes by arguing that the polycentricity conceptual framework is not only a robust analytical structure for the study of complex social phenomena, but is also a challenging method of drawing non-ad hoc analogies between different types of self-organizing complex social systems.

The Structure of Global Law: Fracture, Fluidity, Permeability, and Polycentricity

Abstract: Global law can be understood as the systematization of anarchy, as the management of a loosely intertwined universe of autonomous governance frameworks operating dynamically across borders and grounded in functional differentiation among governance communities. Global law is a way of pointing to an emerging universe of systems that share characteristics and whose interactions lend them to organization; it is the as the law of non-state governance systems. The structure of global law can be understood as an amalgamation of four fundamental characteristics that together define a new order in form that is, in some respects, the antithesis of the orderliness and unity of the law-state system it will displace (though not erase). The essay considers the structure of global law in this context, understood as an amalgamation of four fundamental characteristics that together define a new order in form that is, in some respects, the antithesis of the orderliness and unity of the law-state system it will displace (though not erase). These four fundamental characteristics — fracture, fluidity, permeability, and polycentricity — comprise the fundamental structure of global law. Fracture, fluidity, permeability and polycentricity are the basic characteristics of global law, the systematization of which marks its field boundaries. These also serve as the structural foundations of its constitutional element, its substantive element, and its process element. From that systematization one can derive a method of theorizing the emerging framework of the unity of disunity in governance, in which law and governance systems multiply within a discernible internal logic, while the objects of regulation remain constant. This essay continues work on the evolution of a "law" beyond that of the domestic legal orders of states and the international law frameworks that serve as an expression of state based collective governance. To that extent, it seeks to liberate theory both from the ideological constraints of the state system and as well from the limitations of earlier work in transnational law. To consider the possibility of global law, of law/governance beyond the state, it is necessary to avoid attaching its framework either to the state or to law (as traditionally and narrowly understood as a product of the state).

Is Pennine England becoming more Polycentric or more Centripetal? an analysis of commuting flows in a transforming industrial region, 1981-2001

Abstract: This paper examines census-derived commuting data for the world's earliest major urbanindustrial region, now home to 10 million people. Owing its origins to water power from the Pennine rivers, this region now comprises many closely-spaced cities and towns whose distinct identities have been eroded through the loss of their local industrial specialisms and the long-term growth in mobility. It contains five of the city regions identified by 'The Northern Way', a policy initiative designed as part of the Labour government's 2004 Sustainable Cities Plan for stimulating agglomeration economies across the wider region, with a more polycentric structure being seen as a positive contribution to this development. The paper tests how far this part of Northern England may be evolving into a single polycentric mega-city region, using commuting data from the 1981, 1991 and 2001 Censuses. Two hypotheses are tested; namely, that there is increasing polycentricity within each of the five city regions and that there is increasing linkage between the five city regions. With gravity modelling removing the effects of generic reductions in distance deterrence, evidence is found of trends towards greater polycentricity at both these scales of analysis, albeit modest in scale: there has been some reduction in the five cities' attraction of commuters living in the other parts of their city regions and the boundaries between the city regions have become somewhat more permeable over time.

Understanding of Concepts "One Language" and "General Language"

Abstract: The article is concerned with the correlation of concepts �one language� and �general language�. The research has been executed in terms of problem-oriented search, presenting the language for the researchers as a unique open non-linear system, which is characterized by multidimentionality and polycentricity

Towards Regional Synergy: Potentials for polycentric development in Tehran Metropolitan Region (TMR)

Abstract: A metropolitan Region of the Third World countries like Tehran metropolitan region (TMR) in Iran, in consequence of unbalanced rapid urban growth, is facing with large set of unique social and demographic, cultural, economic, ecological, environmental and managerial problems. The entire problems are because of lack of effective regional plan and uncoordinated structure of the local authorities in concern to regional issues. Recently governments proposed a regional plan for the TMR which intends a polycentric development for the spatial configuration of the TMR. However, having the monocentric picture of the TMR in mind, this question rise that is it really possible to consider the TMR a polycentric urban region? What is the suitable regional strategy that provides synergy in the TMR? In this thesis prominent literatures related to the Polycentric Urban Region (PUR) are reviewed. Two complimentary aspects of polycentricity namely, morphology and functional relationship are identified as essential elements for polycentric development. Governance structure of region is also considered as a third element for reaping the alleged benefits of polycentricity. These three factors together formed the analytical dimension of polycentricity. These three elements were studied in the TMR context and potential and deficiency of the region regarding to these elements are identified. The normative dimension of polycentricity is dedicated to reviewing the history of the region and studying the government’s plans in course of history to see how their plans promote or discourage the polycentric structure in the region. Based on the findings it is concluded that the government’s plan for polycentric development of the region is ambitious and is not consistent with the current realities of the region. Therefore according to the analysis of the region a planning guideline in 5 aspects of centrality, mobility, low income settlements, land escape and governance is proposed. These sets of recommendations aim to provide balance development in the region and create social cohesion. Also by optimal alternation of the governments plan the TMR triangle is introduced and designed. Tehran, Karaj and International Imam Khomeini airport (IKIA) form the corners of this triangle. Three corridors connecting the three corners of this triangle is designed through Transit oriented Development. The superiority of this proposal to the government’s proposal is, first it is based on the realities and potential of the region. Second, It also considers the regional administrative organization for coordination of local authorities. The proposed plan by taking advantage of the potentials in the region steers the government’s plan to the direction which is more feasible. The proposed plan leads to more urban cohesion and synergy in the region and improve the life quality of its residents. In this thesis all the steps from literature review to planning, design and evaluation of the plan are explained extensively.

Arguments for Polycentricity in Romanian Regional Development in the

Abstract: Our study aims at analysing the monocentric/polycentric trends in Romanian regional development and formulating the recommendations regarding public policy for the attenuation of present development disparities. In order to achieve this goal, we used as variables the annual GDP rates of each region, viewed as representations of their development level, for the period of 2008-2013, based on the data supplied by the National Commission of Prognosis (Comisia Naţionala de Prognoza). As a result, we observed a regression of growth rates directly influenced by development levels. We draw the following conclusions: there is a potential, in Romania, for reducing the existent development lag among its regional divisions, through the emergence and sustainable development of new growth poles within poorer regions. The solution for the attenuation of present economic disparities is, consequently, a balanced polycentric development at regional level, opposed to a monocentric development. By placing our analysis at a normative level, a balanced territorial development can be achieved by orienting public policies in two directions: the stimulation of economic growth within slower-growing regions and the dispersion of economic growth from more developed regions towards less developed ones, through a national redistribution process. It is important that the principles based on 'the ability to generate income' must prevail over those based on 'income discrepancies'. Our study can constitute itself as a starting point for future research on the role of agglomerations within a possible configuration of a balanced Romanian territorial development.

Institutional Polycentricity, Resource Orchestration and Firm Performance

Abstract: Theory and research suggests that firms’ environmental context affect the way they manage their resources and the strategies they employ. This research examines effects of institutional polycentric...

The Corporation as Semiosis, 'Citizens United,' the Signification of the Corporate Enterprise and the Development of Law

Abstract: The corporation, like the state from which it preceded and to some extent superseded, can be understood in its triadic sense — as sign, interpretant and object. Like the state, it serves as an incarnate abstraction, an object, the sign and interpretant which shimmers with meanings that from a distance appear solid and yet which, on closer inspection, dissolve into a dynamic complex of interlocking and interacting signification. This polycentricity, and its functional effect in law, was at the center of a recent U.S. Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This paper closely examines Citizens United as an expression of a complex polycentric semiosis. After an introduction, Part II examines the case closely. Part III then draws together the semiotic elements together. The incarnation of the corporation, and its representation as simultaneously political person and property, that is, as person and instrument, signifies both the entity and the person it now simultaneously signifies in ways that suppress and transform both. Citizens United illuminates the object of the corporation as a site of primacy and purpose and also as the place without place or meaning. Within this space of simmering meaning law assumes as fictive a solidity as the enterprise it means to capture through its own craft. What is left is primacy (of the corporation) and purpose within disorder and the absence of meaning, a state of affairs well illustrated in the aftermath of the decision, illustrated in Part IV.

The polycentricity of political financing

Abstract: There is no one perfect system of political financing. The design and development of public policies to regulate the sources of funding for candidates and political parties and their permissible expenditures are influenced by a myriad of mutually reinforcing and, at times, opposing considerations. Political financing regulation constitutes a quintessential form of polycentric decision-making, whereby each design component is connected to every other in ways not wholly understood. This essay draws on the political financing systems of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States to develop a typology of policy options and to examine how each choice relates to every other.