Network Centralities in Polycentric Urban Regions: Methods for the Measurement of Spatial Metrics

The primary aim of this thesis is to explain the complex spatial organisations of polycentric urban regions (PURs). PURs are a form of regional morphology that often evolves from post-industrial structures and describe a subnational area featuring a plurality of urban centres. As of today, the analysis of the spatial organisation of PURs constitutes a hitherto uncharted territory. This is due to PURs’ inherent complexity that poses challenges for their conceptualisation. In this context, this thesis reviews theories on the spatial organisation of regions and cities and seeks to make a foundational methodological contribution by joining space syntax and central place theory in the conceptualisation of polycentric urban regions. It takes into account human agency embedded in the physical space, as well as the reciprocal effect of the spatial organisation for the emergence of centralities and demonstrates how these concepts can give insights into the fundamental regional functioning. The thesis scrutinises the role that the spatial organisation plays in such regions, in terms of organising flows of goods and people, ordering locational occupation and fostering centres of commercial activity. It proposes a series of novel measurements and techniques to analyse large and messy datasets. This includes a method for the application of large-scale volunteered geographic information in street network analysis. This is done, in the context of two post-industrial regions: the German Ruhr Valley and the British Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire region. The thesis’ contribution to the understanding of regional spatial organisation and the study of regional morphology lies in the identification of spatial structural features of socio-economic potentials of regions and particular areas within them. It constitutes the first comparative study of comprehensive large-scale regional spatial networks and presents a framework for the analysis of regions and the evaluation of the predictive potential of spatial networks for socio-economic patterns and the location of centres in regional contexts