Megalopolis unbound: Knowledge collaboration and functional polycentricity within and beyond the Yangtze River Delta Region in China, 2014

Abstract

Recent work on world city networks, urban polycentricity and megapolitan urban forms share an interest in the economic functionality of inter-city linkages. The intersection of these bodies of literature is in the often overlooked defining features of megalopolitan forms -their being the 'hub' that links national to international urban systems and the 'incubator' within national urban systems (Gottmann, 1976). With this intersection in mind, this paper measures the functional polycentricity of China's Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR) at different geographical scales from an intercity knowledge collaboration perspective. The paper uses data on co-publications as an indicator of knowledge linkages between cities within and beyond this megalopolis. The YRDR can be seen as functionally polycentric at the megapolitan scale but this functional polycentricity decreases with increases in the geographical scale at which interurban linkages are considered. Furthermore, a multi-scalar analysis of functional polycentricity helps identify the hub role of Shanghai. The results show that Shanghai's knowledge hub role is currently present at the national scale. It may take some time for Shanghai to become a knowledge hub at the global scale given its not-so-strong international links and relatively weak local links. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future research agendas.

Measuring functional polycentricity of China's urban regions based on the interlocking network model, 2006–15

“…Instead of examining an individual Chinese urban region in detail (e.g. Li and Phelps, ; ; Liu et al ., ; Liu & Wang, ; Zhang & Kloosterman, ; Zhao et al ., ), this study features multiple types of polycentricity change and a larger array of urban regions. It is found that not only the polycentricity but also the polycentricity change is sensitive to scale.…”

“…Hall & Pain, ; Taylor et al ., ) and knowledge (e.g. Li & Phelps, ; ) to analyse the polycentricity of urban regions. However, no dataset is perfect and compromises must be made (Green, ).…”

“…In other studies, knowledge network data (e.g. co‐publication and patent) was found to be more useful in measuring the linkages between cities from an intercity knowledge collaboration perspective (Li & Phelps, ; ).…”

“…First, like cities, urban regions evolve and can become more and less polycentric over time (Li & Phelps, ; ). The degree of polycentricity can be viewed as the result of spatial processes, whose direction can change over time.…”

“…Existing studies only focus on a few important urban regions in China, including the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) (e.g. Li & Phelps, 2016Luo et al, 2011; and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) (e.g. Zhang & Kloosterman, 2016;Zhao et al, 2017), and lack systematic comparisons of polycentricity of urban regions, with the rare exceptions of Liu et al ( , 2017 and Tang et al (2017).…”