The relation systems of metropolitan areas

Abstract

Our study analyses changes undergoing in the relation system of metropolitan areas2 and the issues of social and economic relations arising from the restructuring of spatial and regional disparity systems. Global-scale economic, social and political integration, the processes of global urbanisation, globalising urban networks and the transformation of their subsystems are increasing the importance of large cities and their metropolitan areas. They are squeezing out the earlier systems of spatial relations having shaped up behind nation-state boundaries in the past. All these trends are also manifested by the vigorously increasing importance of cities (Barta, 1998; Cséfalvay, 1999; Enyedi, 2001, 2003, 2006; Knox, 2002). The spatial structuring force of cities and metropolitan areas is leaving its marks on the relation system of cities and their urban areas as well. The earlier hierarchical, mono-centric and core-periphery3 based spatial disparity model of urban areas is now in transition (Ascher, 1995; Baron et al., 2005; Barta - Beluszky, 1999; Enyedi, 2003; Merlin, 2003; Mirloup, 2002; Szirmai et al. 2007). The social, economic and environmental impacts of the newly structured and urbanised regions (Enyedi, 2001, 2003) will reconfigure the system of earlier spatial disparities (Beckouche et al. 1997; Marcuse, 1989; Szirmai, 2004). Besides (and partly instead of) monocentric and hierarchical schemed relations, horizontal cooperation models based on the functional division of labour and networked organisational systems will operate as the driving engines of spatial organisation ...