DETECTING CITY-DIPOLES IN GREECE BASED ON INTERCITY COMMUTING

Abstract

According to growth poles theory, the areas lacking critical sizes to develop polycentric structures are restricted to the development of structures of special configuration. In Greece, the development of growth poles is restricted to the emergence of “urban dipoles” and “tripoles”, which are often used in the literature within a not well defined context. Based on a recently introduced method, this paper quantitatively detects functional dipoles in Greece by discriminating zones in the distribution of commuting, the number of daily movements for occupational purposes outside the city of residence. The analysis is implemented at three different levels of geographical scale, the intercity, an adjusted intercity (without the metropolitan regions), and the interregional scale. The analysis detects the functional dipoles per geographical scale and reveals the distance levels where polycentric structures emerge in the setting of commuting in Greece. Overall, this examines the applicability of a new dipoles detection method and paper provides insights into the conceptualization of hierarchy in urban structures, into the context of regional science and regional economics. © 2022 Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists. All rights reserved.