New economic spaces of metropolis – structure, functions and linkages of business districts on the basis of emerging Warsaw metropolis

The main objective of the project is to show the impact of globalisation processes on spatial and functional changes in metropolitan areas. One consequence of the inclusion of metropolises in the global space of flows is the development of new economic spaces and an increasing polycentricity of the spatial structures in metropolitan areas, a process which may ultimately weaken the traditional city centre. The scale of these processes depends on the position of a given city within the global network of metropolises, which makes the emerging Warsaw metropolis a particularly relevant object of research due to its well-established position in the global rankings. As a result, on one hand the project will show the territorial dimension of globalisation processes in the local scale, and on the other it will identify the mechanisms whereby metropolitan business districts are created and function in the global space.

The specific objective of the project is to examine whether, and how, changes in Warsaw’s economic spatial structure lead to the weakening of its central business district as a result of metropolisation processes, and how such new economic spaces function in a supra-local scale. The project is focused on three research questions: a) whether there are any differences in the mode of operation of the central and secondary business districts; b) whether the relations between the central and secondary business districts are equivalent in terms of the spatial linkages of enterprises; c) what are the reasons for the presence or lack of similarities between the central and secondary business districts regarding their structure, functions and spatial linkages.