Urban structure and polycentrism: an analysis of urban systems from economic relations in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona

Abstract

From an employment perspective, polycentrism highlights the value of established economic relations between urban centres and their areas of influence, based on hierarchical relationships of the size of the labour market, and also complementary relationships between companies existing in them. This article attempts to show, firstly, what are these areas of economic functionality existing in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona that account for the polycentric structure, in order that they serve as reference of efficient public policies about of territorial development; and secondly, to offer an alternative methodology for subcentre detection methods contained in the state of the art. For these purposes from the input-output matrix (which accounts for complementarity among economic sectors) and matrix of commuting flows (which accounts for the location of workplaces by economic sector), we estimate the monetary flows among the different municipalities of Catalonia with the assistance of a spatial interaction model. From these flows are constructed functional areas in which such territory is structured from the perspective of the complementarity of economic activity. The results indicate a territorial organization, which show the most extended and consolidated functionality areas located around urban centres with larger and diversified labour markets; in addition it is noted that the centre-periphery dichotomy vanishes against the emergence of consolidated areas with economic functionability.