Labour market cohesion and the optimal polycentric urban region size in Belgium

A defining feature of the spatial extent of agglomeration economies is the size and mass of the urban labour market. A larger labour market logically entails a higher potential for specialization and thus we expect a more robust regional economic performance. In Western Europe, we frequently observe that formerly independent urban labour markets have coalesced in metropolitan polycentric regions. However, such a process of urban fusion is never unambiguous and therefore discussion is rampant on the extent of the resulting polycentric metropolitan areas. We examine the spatial integration of th... Mehr ...