Is polycentricity a promising tool to reduce regional economic disparities? Evidence from China’s prefectural regions

Abstract Although polycentrism is widely regarded by city planners and policymakers as a potential solution for reducing regional disparities, there is currently little empirical basis for accepting or rejecting this claim. Our study aims to fill this empirical gap by providing reliable evidence as to whether or not a polycentric urban structure can reduce regional economic disparities. However, we reach a counter-intuitive result: monocentricity, from the morphological perspective, is robustly associated with less territorial economic disparity in China’s prefectural regions. Further analyses illustrate that the core cities in monocentric regions can share the benefits of agglomeration through labor mobility, and monocentricity does not introduce an extra agglomeration shadow. Meanwhile, cities within polycentric regions may not “borrow” as much function or performance from each other as expected. These results suggest that polycentric-oriented spatial strategy, at least in terms of morphology, may not be an appropriate policy to enhance cohesion in China.