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Home / Built Environment, Volume 32, Number 2

RhineRuhr: Towards Compatibility? Strategic Spatial Policies for a Specific Configuration of Polycentricity

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Authors: Knapp, Wolfgang; Schmitt, Peter; Danielzyk, Rainer

Source: Built Environment, Volume 32, Number 2, 1 June 2006, pp. 137-147(11)

Publisher: Alexandrine Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2148/benv.32.2.137

Concepts of polycentricity and networks take a central place in current thinking about the restructuring of urban regions. This academic discourse will be sketched in view of the search for synergies within the polycentric urban region RhineRuhr. The notion of synergy, which makes the whole network of cities more than the sum of its parts, will be discussed in the light of a fuzzy strategic concept that qualifies RhineRuhr as a metropolitan region constituting a critical mass for international competitiveness on the one hand, but hardly any steps to implement this option on the other. In the final section, therefore, some ideas will be put forward to make regional strategic policies more compatible with both the problems of the specific polycentric structure of RhineRuhr as well as the latent synergetic potentials within this region.

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 01 June 2006

More about this publication?

  • Built Environment is published quarterly in March, June, September and December. With an emphasis on crossing disciplinary boundaries and providing global perspective, each issue focuses on a single subject of contemporary interest to practitioners, academics and students working in a wide range of disciplines. Issues are guest-edited by established international experts who not only commission contributions, but also oversee the peer-reviewing process in collaboration with the Editors.

    Subject areas include: architecture; conservation; economic development; environmental planning; health; housing; regeneration; social issues; spatial planning; sustainability; urban design; and transport. All issues include reviews of recent publications.

    The journal is abstracted in Geo Abstracts, Sage Urban Studies Abstracts, and Journal of Planning Literature, and is indexed in the Avery Index to Architectural Publications.

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