Information diffusion between Dutch cities: Revisiting Zipf and Pred using a computational social science approach

News travels fast and far, and the general idea is that the spatial extent of news coverage has increased over time. Information flows are always involved in systems of interdependent cities. This is the reason why George Zipf and Allan Pred, both pioneers of the urban systems literature, were eager to obtain data on these relations to...

One century of information diffusion in the Netherlands derived from a massive digital archive of historical newspapers: The DIGGER dataset

Previous studies have highlighted the importance of having long term data for the study of cities, but such sources are relatively scarce. This is especially the case for data about relations between cities, which is a crucial aspect of urban dynamics. Over the last two decades, many efforts have been made to digitalize texts, including books...

A strategic knowledge and research agenda on polycentric metropolitan areas

Shifting fortunes of neighbouring cities

Polycentricity is often conceived to be the product of “a long process of very extended decentralization from big central cities to adjacent smaller ones, old and new” (Hall and Pain, 2006: 3). Accordingly, polycentric spatial development (as a process) is usually identified with a development towards a more balanced distribution of functions...

Closing the Gap: Territorial Cohesion through Polycentric Development

This article discusses and analyses national polycentric development policies aiming at cohesion. Due to its insertion in the 1999 European Spatial Development Perspective ‘polycentricity’ has become an important concept in discussions on Europe’s territorial and economic development. Its content remains however rather unclear. This paper...