Polynet Action 3.1/3.2 2 South East England 1.2 Methodology

Evidence from the four preceding POLYNET empirical studies (Actions 1.1-2.2) reveals that South East England is unique amongst NorthWest Europe's mega-city-regions. It is by far the largest MCR, extending beyond the area mapped in Action 1.1, west into the South West and north into the South Midlands regions. Most significantly, commuting and business network analyses reveal prominent functionally polycentric relationships covering a wide arc to the west of the region, linked to London's predominant global connectivity. In contrast, morphological polycentricity, identified in RhineRuhr and the Randstad, is associated with weak intra-regional functional linkages. Major findings from across the POLYNET study regions demonstrate: First, precise MCR boundaries are difficult to define and do not coincide with administrative boundaries. Second, functional polycentricity, which describes knowledge-based flows in advanced business networks, is distinct from morphological polycentricity, which describes the geographical distribution of cities and towns of different sizes. Third, in all MCRs, functional concentration is found to be essential to global business connectivity and the 'knowl-edge gateway' role of First Cities. Even in South East England, an east-west imbalance prevails with implications for intra-regional economic sustainability. Fourth, significantly, polycentricity – whether related to residentially-driven commuting or business travel-is found to have environmentally unsustainable impacts across all MCRs. Virtual communications do not replace the need for mobility-commuting and business travel, that cross-cuts hub-and-spoke public transport networks, is heavily car reliant. Action 3.1 of the study, reported on here, examines the implications of these findings for policy and sustainable management in the South East England MCR. The methodology used in the City of London study which preceded POLYNET (Taylor et al 2003) has been adopted across the study regions. This comprises two linked research activities: (i) A review of policy documents for the MCR: Major EU, national and regional policy documents which provide the context for policy in the MCR have been studied to determine to what extent policy frameworks have synergy with key issues identified in the research.