Sarkar, Somwrita, Wu, Hao and Levinson, D. (2020) Measuring polycentricity via network flows, spatial interaction, and percolation

Somwrita Sarkar, Hao Wu and David Levinson

No 2022-01, Working Papers from University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group

Abstract: Polycentricity, or the number of central urban places, is commonly measured by location-based metrics (e.g. employment density/total number of workers, above a threshold). While these metrics are good indicators of location ‘centricity’, results are sensitive to threshold choice. We consider the alternative idea that a centre’s status depends on its connectivity to other locations through trip inflows/outflows: this is inherently a network rather than place idea. Three flow and network-based centricity metrics for measuring metropolitan area polycentricity using journey-to-work data are presented: (a) trip-based; (b) density-based; and (c) accessibility-based. Using these measures, polycentricity is computed and rank-centricity distributions are plotted to test Zipf-like or Christaller-like behaviours. Further, a percolation theory framework is proposed for the full origin–destination matrix, where trip flows are used as a thresholding parameter to count the number of sub-centres. Trip flows prove to be an effective measure to count and hierarchically organise metropolitan areas and sub-centres, tackling the arbitrariness of defining any threshold on employment statistics to count sub-centres. Applications on data from the Greater Sydney region show that the proposed framework helps to characterise polycentricity and sub-regional organisation more robustly, and provide unexpected insights into the connections between land use, labour market organisation, transport and urban structure.

Keywords: accessibility; Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area; journey-to-work; origin–destination flows; networks; percolation; polycentricity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R14 R41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Urban Studies. 57(12), 2402–2422.

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http://hdl.handle.net/2123/18792 First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nex:wpaper:polycentricity

DOI: 10.1177/0042098019832517

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