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look at the situation in the Eastern candidate countries and the enlargement-related
funding.
6.3.4 Polycentricity
The concept of polycentric development has to be pursued, to ensure regionally
balanced development, because the EU is becoming fully integrated in the global
economy. Pursuit of this concept will help to avoid further excessive economic and
geographic concentration in the core area of the EU.
European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) (1999h):20
The concept of polycentricity is intimately bound up with attempts to
reconceptualize and ultimately reshape the spatial structure of urban hierarchies in
Europe.
The difficulty to disentangle rhetorical vision, analytical content and
prescriptive policy elements connected to different concepts of polycentricity
(particularly with regard to the ESDP) has already been variously discussed in the
literature (e.g. Albrechts 2001; Bailey and Turok 2001; Copus 2001; Kloosterman and
Musterd 2001; Krätke 2001; van Houtum and Legendijk 2001; Davoudi 2001a). Like
cohesion, the polycentricity-storyline is based on the key insight that Europe needs a
more equal distribution of globalization and integration gains than is presently the case.
Richardson and Jensen (2000:505) correctly note that “the construction of EU spatial
discourse is conditioned by several mega trends: the globalized market, the emergence of
the competitive city, and the culture of mobility” and that the resulting reframing of cities
is guided by visions of “transcending spatial distances across Europe.” 22
In the late
1980s, researchers at the French spatial planning agency DATAR presented an image of
22 In the related article, Richardson and Jensen identify mobility and polycentric development as central
themes in the European Spatial Development Perspective. Note, however, that what they identify as a
“mobility discourse” is less directly related to infrastructure investments but more attributable to a general
“culture of mobility” that aims at “transcending spatial distances.”