The polycentric city-region that never was: <br />Paris agglomeration, Bassin parisien <br />and spatial planning strategies in France

The polycentric city-region that never was: <br />Paris agglomeration, Bassin parisien <br />and spatial planning strategies in France

[SHS:GEO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography

business services

economic decentralization

polycentricity

spatial differentiation

labor market sub-fragmentation

What is the importance of business services decentralization in a Parisian metropolitan region known for its inherited monocentricity? Using revised statistical and cartographic methodological tools, I try to answer two debates: Is the new Parisian metropolitan economic geography one of dispersal or of polycentricity? Does decentralization mean the decline or the reinforcement of the economic core? <br />If secondary suburban economic centers benefit from business services decentralization trends, Paris City's neighboring spaces such as the Inner western suburbs of La Défense and Boulogne-Billancourt are affected too. This paper intends to demonstrate that polycentricity is not opposite to the constitution of a new golden triangle within the dense part of the agglomeration. This means both that economic centrality still matters (thus questioning that dispersed cities is the twenty-first century's metropolitan archetype), and that an enlarged CBD (Core Business District) straddling Paris and the western Hauts-de-Seine département, is being reinforced (thus invalidating CBD decline theory). Thanks to the widening of the business district from Paris to La Défense, the labor market remains an integrated one; meanwhile, secondary economic centers in the Outer Suburbs tend to create fragmented sub-regional labor markets of their own.

Halbert, Ludovic

Economic Geography

ISSN:0013-0095

2004

ENG

article in peer-reviewed journal

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00277943

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/27/79/43/PDF/Halbert_2004_Economic_Geography_Paris.pdf