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| PROGRESS OF STUDIES ON POLYCENTRIC URBAN REGION IN WESTERN COUNTRIES |
| QIN Cheng-lin, LI Hong-ye |
| Institute of Hong Kong, Macao & SEZs, Economy College, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China |
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Abstract With the development of globalization, both the function and boundary of city have been expanding continually. City has been given a lot of new meanings. In the recent years, "space" has been stressed in regional science, and studies on "spatial structure" have been more and more important. As new technology developed, "space of flow" and "network" come into being, which brings new characteristics to urban region development. Polycentric Urban Region (PUR) as a new configuration of urban region development is an important part of this issue. In Western, studies on PUR have been hot topics among urban and regional spatial researchers, and it also attracts many researchers' interests in China gradually. PUR is not only a topic discussed by Economic Geographers, but also scholars in other domains. Consequently, Scholars from different domains have carried on researches about this subject from different perspectives. For example, economists focused on the economic model of regional economic development suited to PUR, while urban planners paid more attention on the micro formation mechanism of PUR. However, there are still different views on many basic questions, such as the functions of PUR. It is these differences that accelerated the researches on this subject. Although the theory of PUR is immature, it has been implemented in the spatial planning of EU. From European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) to European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON), a lot of files have been announced by EU, and researches on PUR are still carrying on. For the policy makers, PUR is a good instrument, since it can not only improve the competition capacity of region, but also can promote balanced development in a region or a country. China, as the biggest developing country, unbalance development of regions is a huge obstacle for sustainable development of the country. PUR may provide a new direction to solve this problem. Progress on PUR can be found both in theory and in practice. Nowadays, the attention is mainly paid to four aspects, which are the connotation and definition of PUR, the measure method of PUR, the evolution of PUR and the functions of PUR. This article mainly summarized the topics in question and introduced some progress on this object.
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Received: 16 May 2011
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2012, Vol. 27 
