The economic performance of urban structure: From the perspective of Polycentricity and Monocentricity

Polycentric planning strategies aimed at addressing traffic congestion and other agglomeration diseconomies have not achieved expected effects, leading researchers to doubt the effectiveness of polycentricity. So far, the small stream of literature focusing on the linkage between urban spatial structure and economic performance is inconclusive. This paper examines this linkage from mono- and polycentric perspective using China's Second National Economic Census for cities proper. It concludes that polycentricity benefits urban economic performance, as measured by labor productivity. This result is robust to alternative polycentric indexes and also to TSLS estimations. The heterogeneity tests show the availability of internet, as mediator, could improve the effects of polycentricity on economic performance. These findings support the implementation of polycentric planning strategy.