Beyond Postsuburbia? Multifunctional Service Agglomeration in Vienna's Urban Fringe

The surroundings of European cities are becoming ever more complex and sophisticated landscapes. In recent years there has been an ongoing debate about urban fringes that are developing over and beyond the influence of postsuburban processes into decentralised and non-centred urban landscapes. This paper addresses the urgent need to consider polycentric functional service clustering in the urban fringes based on empirical evidence gathered in Vienna, Austria, which served as a case study. A spatial scan statistic is applied to detect local spatial clusters of services and the bivariate K(d)-function is used to investigate the spatial interaction between each nucleus. Due to some significant functional clusters, it has been concluded that agglomeration economies are still of prime interest. Furthermore, some significant attraction between the studied clusters is investigated. Overall, the results do not contradict the concept of postsuburbia yet, which is why a paradigm shift must be ruled out.