Figure 37 - Principle of Networked urban system and its features

alignment of economic policies to the land-use (spatial) planning and transport planning to create an equally distributed economic system. (Roberts et al., 1999) This distributed system is an advanced form of polycentric urban system. (Roberts et al., 1999)

Overall, the system consists of two main elements: 1. Nodes/ Anchors 2. Networks/ Connections

4.2.3.1. Nodes/ Anchors

Dividing the urban centre into smaller parts means compromising the benefits of agglomeration effects. Hence it is important to organize this division into compact strategic nodes within the city, developing them using the principals of co-location and density in a such a way that each node may be a hub of firms specialised in compatible sectors. Therefore, more developed these strategic nodes are, more the benefits of agglomeration to the nearby areas by localization of (higher order) services.

Polycentric city with connected satellite clusters

Networked Urban System

Urban growth boundary (compact city)

Principle urban centers

District centers

Neighbourhood centers Neighbourhood links District links City links

Figure 37 - Principle of Networked urban system and its features Source: Re-illustrated from (Babelon, 2015)

These urban centres take a hierarchical form in order to balance economic growth with liveability of citizens as well as from governance point of view. (Haase et al., 2021; Hall & Pain, 2012)

All the three cities follow this hierarchical order of metropolitan/ regional urban centres, district centres and neighbourhoods’ centres. It is observed that different cities use different terminologies, for example, Portland describes these centres as ‘central city’, ‘gateway regional centre’, ‘town centres’ and ‘neighbourhood centres’, while Melbourne refers them as ‘Metropolitan activity centre’, ‘major activity centres’ and ‘Neighbourhood activity Centres (NAC)’, however, it must be noted that the function remains the same. These centres/ anchors/ nodes are built around public transit and present a hierarchical descending order of density, mixed land, social and economic used (and thus localization of services) and connected slow mobility services. All the cities intend to further intensify the existing already developed nodes, and simultaneously are focussing their investment in developing the suburban urban centres. Developing these nodes based on compact city principles will contribute to physical landuse mix, economic mix as well as social mix. (Bibri et al., 2020; Haase et al., 2021; Picon, 2018)

4.2.3.2. Connections

These strategic nodes need to be connected to each other. It must be noted that these connections should not only be in physical space, through streets and high-quality public transit, but also through telecommunications network, thus making cities compatible in local, regional, and global scale. (Picon, 2018) Unlike, polycentric urban system which emphasizes connections between principal urban centres only, distributed, and networked system, emphasises intensification of connections across all the nodes in an equal and distributed manner.(Roberts et al., 1999) This phenomenon is observable in all the three cases.

Moreover, green connections can be considered, a third form of connection. Although covered under the compact city model as ‘green structure’ or ‘green spaces’ (Bibri et al., 2020; Jabareen, 2016), these green spaces apart from adding environmental biodiversity in cities, they also help providing access to greens for individuals. They act as informal connections across the city, and also promote slow mobility. Portland is a good example of this. The city intends to create a network of ‘city greenways’ which connect and bind the whole city, right from neighbourhood scale. These ‘green corridors’ and ‘trails’ also connect to larger blue green infrastructure in the city. (See figure 18 in Chapter 3)

4.2.3.3. Social Welfare Policies and an integrated Approach to Spatial & Transport planning:

As mentioned before, creating a distributed system requires not only an economic and land-use mix, but also social mix of population. Therefore, integrating not only land-use, transport, and economic policies, but also social welfare policies.

The literature suggests that cities focussing only on economic structures and land use diversity, shall although create the effects of agglomeration and avail provision of betterquality services in the neighbourhoods, but risk creating exclusive communities and increase socio-economic disparities in the cities. (Bramley & Power, 2009; Gil Solá et al., 2018)

The three cities, although to a varying extent according to their local socio-economic and political set-up, have adopted strategies of adding affordable housing, increasing home ownership, initiating rent control policies to address the issue of polarities and create an evenly distributed social mix at city scale while also addressing densification and diversification strategies of compact city.

SECTION 3: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION