Polycentric development : panacea for regional disparities in European countries ?

Trends in regional disparities have been a major issue in regional science for many decades and knowledge of ways to overcome such disparities has great importance for regional policy-making. Regional and spatial policies addressing regional disparities increasingly pay attention to the city system often under the label of ‘polycentric development’. Central to the concept of polycentric development is that economic and/or economically relevant functions are distributed over the urban system in such a way that a multitude of urban centres rather than one or two gains significance in a territorially balanced way (Meijers et al., 2005). Balanced urban or territorial development is a more or less synonymous term. It has been suggested that polycentric development can be instrumental to reducing regional disparities, see for instance the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) (CEC, 1999) and the Second Cohesion Report (CEC, 2001). The main concern of the ESDP is to combat existing regional disparities at the EU level. In order to arrive at a more balanced spatial structure its first main objective is the development of a balanced and polycentric urban system, as well as a new urban-rural relationship. It is argued that ‘the economic potential of all regions of the EU can only be utilized through the further development of a more polycentric European settlement structure’ (CEC, 1999, p.20). In the Third Cohesion Report the main emphasis is on territorial cohesion, which is placed on an equal footing as economic and social cohesion in the (unratified) Constitutional Treaty. Within the discussion on territorial cohesion the idea of polycentricity gets much emphasis (Faludi, 2005). Next to the European scale, also many European countries pursue a polycentric development, often addressing the dominance of their prime city to diminish regional disparities (Waterhout et al., 2005). Therefore, polycentricity is not just a descriptive term, but also a policy stance prescribing a means to promote and equalise economic growth (Hague and Kirk, 2003). Apparently, policy makers assume a strong relationship between the urban system and the persistence of regional disparities. A monocentric urban system, with a dominant city, often the capital, dominating over other cities would lead to divergence; while on the contrary, a more polycentric urban system would allegedly lead to convergence between regions. Concentration of support to dynamic growth poles would be an engine for growth for the whole country and its regions through regional spillovers (Perroux, 1955 and Kaldor, 1970). However, this assumed relationship between a polycentric urban system and limited regional disparities lacks both a strong theoretical underpinning and empirical justification. The aim of this paper is to test the hypothesis that a polycentric city system leads to less regional disparities. The paper presents measures of the extent of polycentricity of the national urban systems of 27 European countries. This data is linked with calculations of regional disparities within these countries. Are countries with a relatively polycentric urban system characterised by less regional disparities than more monocentric countries? The answer to this question will further extent our understanding of the potential benefits and drawbacks of a polycentric pattern of development, an issue raised in the discussion paper.