Reducing Regional Disparities by Means of Polycentric Development: Panacea or Placebo?

Journal title SCIENZE REGIONALI
Author/s Evert Meijers, Krister Sandberg
Publishing Year 2008 Issue 2008/Suppl. 2 Language Italian
Pages 26 P. 71-96 File size 114 KB
DOI
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

Reducing Regional Disparities by Means of Polycentric Development: Panacea or Placebo? In many territorial development strategies, both at the European and national scale, it is suggested that polycentric development is instrumental in reducing regional disparities. However, this widespread assumption lacks empirical justification, while also its theoretical base is weak. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it explores the theoretical bases of the assumed relation between a country’s urban system and regional disparities. Second, it tests the hypothesis that countries with a relatively polycentric national urban system are characterised by fewer regional disparities than are more monocentric countries. Evidence points in the opposite direction to what is generally expected: the more polycentric a country, the larger its regional disparities. This calls for critical reflection on the value of polycentric development as a concept to bring about cohesion. Keywords: Polycentric development, Regional disparities, Cohesion JEL classification codes: R11, R12, O18

Evert Meijers, Krister Sandberg, Reducing Regional Disparities by Means of Polycentric Development: Panacea or Placebo? in "SCIENZE REGIONALI " Suppl. 2/2008, pp 71-96, DOI: