CHANGING URBAN SYSTEM FROM MONOCENTRIC TO POLYCENTRIC AS A CONCEPT FOR NATIONAL URBAN STRATEGY FORMATION | ||||
| JES. Journal of Engineering Sciences | ||||
| Article 31, Volume 37, No 5, September and October 2009, Page 1299-1319 PDF (719.88 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Research Paper | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/jesaun.2009.128195 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Author | ||||
| Ibtihal Ahmed Abdel Muti | ||||
| Lecturer, Department of Regional Development, College of Urban and Regional Planning, Cairo University | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| The urban balance has been a major issue on the regional and national level, and its trend has great importance for development and policymaking. Many regional and spatial policies have been pay attention to the city system as a tool to achieve development and reduce regional disparities. Recently it has been argued that the polycentric urban system distribute relevant economic functions over the urban system in such a way that a multitude of urban canters can play an economic role in a territorially balanced way rather than one or two gains benefits. A growing research assumes a strong relationship between the urban system and the persistence of regional disparities. A monocentric urban system, with a dominant city, often the capital, dominating over other cities would lead to divergence; while on the contrary, a more polycentric urban system would allegedly lead to convergence between regions. The paper suggests that polycentric development can be a regional and national development instrument to reduce disparities in Egypt, and support dynamic growth for the whole country and its regions through regional spillovers. The paper presents measures of the extent of polycentricity of the national urban system and its trend through many periods and several city sizes ranges. This data is linked with calculations of regional disparities within these ranges depending on unemployment and GDP data for cities. The findings from the data analysis observed variations in the relation between city ranges and disparities although the strong relation between rank-size distribution and the emerging of polycintricity in some ranges. The paper proposes important methodological and institutional needs to establish polycentric urban system in Egypt . | ||||
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