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In this paper we examine the recent developments in the Greek system of urban centres, in order to assess the validity of the view that trends of deconcentration have been in operation during the last decade. Estimation of the rank — size distribution functions for all the postwar census years shows that concentration trends were prevalent until the early 1980s. During the last decade, however, stabilisation or even deconcentration trends have appeared with the faster development of smaller cities. This finding should not be taken as an indication of a trend reversal towards more balanced spatial development, as further analysis shows that the faster growing smaller cities are largely satellite cities of the metropolitan centres of Athens and Thessaloniki. Based on the results of regression analysis, we conclude with a discussion on the factors contributing to differential urban growth performance and the policy implications of these findings for metropolitan regions and balanced growth in Greece.

This article places the core-periphery division in the European Union (EU) within the framework of global imbalances and the dramatic geopolitical changes which have affected them in the past decades. These changes, which have been shaping the new world order, amount to the restructuring of developed economies with the engulfing of manufacturing by the financial sector; the shift in the geography of industrial activity resulting from the increased outsourcing and offshoring of production and increasing services; the transfer of competitiveness from West to East, to dynamic Asian economies, notably China; the emergence of chronic trade and financial imbalances in the global system, leading to the “debt-fuelled growth” of many advanced economies. The above developments, facilitated by free trade market reforms and enhanced by the financial crisis of 2008, threaten economic and political dominance of the West, particularly the US, and therefore the existing core-periphery pattern. A similar pattern of developments has been taking place within Europe (through the transfer of industrial production from the West to the East) which implies changes to the old European core-periphery pattern. The article approaches critically and qualitatively the above issues, by examining the convergence trends among EU member states and the possible factors underlying them, as well as a number of theoretical approaches that interpret spatial inequalities and core-periphery patterns.

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