Polycentrism: Boon or Barrier to Metropolitan Competitiveness? The Case of the Randstad Holland

Localising urbanisation trajectories: comparing the emergence of second-tier urban regions in Europe (1890–2011)

“…] has no more than three cities and twenty-five towns; however, the villages and hamlets are so numerous, that it looks like a continuous city. (Silveira [1789(Silveira [ ] 1990 The long-term spatial processes shaping urban regions left behind physical, cultural and infrastructural traces over which contemporary forms are imprinted (Batty 2001), and a diachronic analysis of urbanisation trajectories can offer insights that a snapshot of current configurations does not provide (Lambregts 2006). Yet, that historical dimension is not always recognised by comparative studies.…”

“…This has clear implications for policy and spatial planning, which many scholars have stressed (Lambregts 2006;Burger et al 2011;Harrison and Heley 2015). Notably, centrifugal and hierarchic forms of expansion from dominant core cities onto hinterlands with little history of prior urbanisation are likely to produce different functional and socio-economic arrangements, as well as political and cultural relations, than a mix of fragmented growth processes, emanating from a main core and other centres, with greater local divergences and coexisting contradictory trends.…”

Overcoming barriers to institutional integration in European second-tier urban regions

“…Dieleman and Faludi (1998) argue that styles of urban governance in the different cities of PURs are 'worlds apart', and cities profile themselves separately rather than as part of a greater whole. This restricts the scale of place attachment of the population and the organizing capacity of PURs compared to large centres with a single administration: Lambregts (2006) asks how 'metropolitan qualities' could be added to the Randstad, as they appear much lower than in 'real metropolises such as Paris, London, Madrid and Milan […] turning the Randstad into a "potential" metropolis at best or a "powerless", disjointed collection of middlesized cities at worst ' (2006, p. 119).…”

“…This has led policy-makers and researchers to advocate the formation of urban regions 1 as a way to build upon the potentials of larger population, functional mass and diversity, and stronger political influence in national and supranational contexts (BBSR, 2011;Otgaar, van den Berg, van den Meer, & Speller, 2008). Tighter functional and spatial integration is key to unlock the 'metropolitan potential' of urban regions (Lambregts, 2006), because a simple aggregate of nearby centres does not provide the same level of agglomeration benefits as a single large city of equivalent size (Lambooy, 1998;Meijers, 2008). To support this process, Ahrend, Farchy, Kaplanis, and Lembcke (2015) and others add institutional integration to the drivers of economic growth, arguing that less fragmented governance frameworks and collaboration in urban regions can contribute to harnessing the potential of size and diversity that emerges at that scale.…”

“…For instance, several authors have analysed the difficulties of integration in urban regions formed around highly dominant core cities (for simplicity, here named 'primate urban regions'), due to the perception of asymmetric power relations and benefit distribution caused by the excessive socio-economic, cultural and demographic contrasts among jurisdictions (Feiock, 2007;Lefèvre, 1998;Nelles, 2009). On the other extreme, integration strategies in so-called polycentric urban regions (PURs), consisting of nearby urban centres of similar size, are hampered by the lack of a leading city bringing other stakeholders together, and of a sense of shared identity across the urban region (Dieleman & Faludi, 1998;Lambregts, 2006).…”