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Summing Small Cities Does Not Make a Large City: Polycentric Urban Regions and the Provision of Cultural, Leisure and Sports Amenities

OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 9, Delft, 2628 BX, The Netherlands, e.j.meijers{at}tudelft.nl

The paper explores whether a polycentric urban region can reap the advantages of its combined urban size to a similar extent as a similar-sized monocentric city-region. This question is elaborated for the provision of cultural, leisure and sports amenities. Their presence in 42 Dutch regions is expressed in an index, which serves as the dependent variable in a multiple regression model. An explaining variable is the extent of polycentricity of a region. Correcting for differences between regions in terms of population size, the number of visitors and average income, it turns out that the more polycentric a region is, the fewer cultural, leisure and sports amenities are present. Conversely, the more monocentric a region, the more such amenities.

Urban Studies, Vol. 45, No. 11, 2323-2342 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0042098008095870


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