Polycentrism and Insularity Metrics for In-Land Areas

Abstract

The aim of polycentrism, as a policy, is to promote balanced territorial development between urban centres and its hinterland by creating functional integration. In this view, polycentric urban systems are a mean to achieve a more efficient and more sustainable territorial organization than single-centric systems and small dispersed settlements. At regional/local level, an operational objective could be to move from one or two dominant regional centres (polarization) to a network of small and medium-sized centres providing regional services. This process has to be finalized through strategic alliances between cities, particularly where critical mass is lacking, and rural partnerships urban exploring common potential and joint development projects.

The idea is to deliver a territorial schema to organize the connection of cities, metropolitan regions and their hinterland through infrastructures and effective services supply distribution. The negative part of this schema represents the territorial insularity effect: it is the case of those in-land areas, considered as the extreme periphery of the polycentric structure, that are not connected, in facts, with any center belonging to the top-level hierarchy adopted in the model.

The study for the identification of territorial structures in Basilicata was carried out through the analysis of various variables: the demographic structure, the infrastructure endowment and organizational models that condition the territorial accessibility. In Basilicata three levels of polycentric hierarchy have been identified, according to different levels of concentration of high and medium-level functions. The insularity effect had been mapped. The calculations reveal a large gap between the outermost and the innermost centres of the Region (referring to their geographical position).