Managing complexity of urban systems: A polycentric approach

The concept of polycentrism and territorial governance has been broadly discussed in spatial planning, as well as in governance communities. Polycentric urban development in the EU has brought a high concentration of both economic activities and population to urban spaces, efficient functional divisions between settlements, relatively territorially homogenous accessibility of services and working places for the population, as well as strong urban system interdependences. This has led to the growing vulnerability of urban systems to external shocks (natural and human), which whilst often appearing locally in fact affect whole systems. The combination of spatial-territorial polycentricism and multilevel polycentric governance concepts aims to address the challenges of managing external shocks, providing an adaptive and robust framework for the long-term sustainability of urban systems. Evidence from Transnational Municipal Networks demonstrates the potential of combine polycentricism to address the complexity of decision-making and fuzziness in the spatial development and create a new quality of spatial organization in a knowledge-based society. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.