The Road Towards Polycentric Development in Romania’s Functional Urban Areas. A Geospatial Approach

Abstract

Polycentrism, studied at any geographical scale, local, metropolitan or regional, represents a sustainable perspective of development regarding the settlements, employment and facilities systems. It is usual to find this kind of development in Western Europe, in contrast with the Eastern part of the continent. The context is an accelerated economic and demographic development of the main Romanian cities and of the communes adjacent to it, but unbalanced in relation to the nearby settlements. Socialist ideologies left their traces in the urban planning of cities built completely in the XXth century or through the systematization of historical centers and street configuration. The study areas that we chose for this paper are the functional urban areas of the main cities from Romania. We hereby study the distribution of the secondary nuclei within FUAs through a geostatistical perspective, using methods such as spatial autocorrelation and GIS tools. Among the explanatory variables that we take into account, there is the employment rate, number of commuters, density of facilities etc. The main issue that we are answering is whether these secondary centers have the potential to transform the FUA into a polycentric structure and therefore, to achieve an even economical, spatial and transport system development.