Why is Katowice so obscure?

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Of course as others have already asked, you might ask why certain polycentric metropolitan areas (Upper Silesian, Ruhr, certain areas in Northern France, Wallonia and Northern England,...) are less prominent than monocentric areas of the same population.

E.g. how well known are any of the Yorkshire cities (Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford etc) to people outside the UK?

I’d be tempted to argue that Headingley is more globally well known than Leeds itself, post-Tendulkar.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I think I will add a corollary to Palandio's excellent post: the polycentric metropolitan area does not exist in the New World or "settled countries" to use a broader term. You can find such cores in not just the European examples but also India, China, and Africa, even after accounting for their higher populations on average. But basically none in the Americans or Oceania.

Bay Area, Hampton Roads, South Florida, Tampa Bay, Fraser Valley, Niagara Region...

[Sol]

I think I will add a corollary to Palandio's excellent post: the polycentric metropolitan area does not exist in the New World or "settled countries" to use a broader term. You can find such cores in not just the European examples but also India, China, and Africa, even after accounting for their higher populations on average. But basically none in the Americans or Oceania.

Bay Area, Hampton Roads, South Florida, Tampa Bay, Fraser Valley, Niagara Region...

Literally so many! I'd be curious in hearing Oryxslayer's explanation because this just doesn't compute.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

I think I will add a corollary to Palandio's excellent post: the polycentric metropolitan area does not exist in the New World or "settled countries" to use a broader term. You can find such cores in not just the European examples but also India, China, and Africa, even after accounting for their higher populations on average. But basically none in the Americans or Oceania.

Bay Area, Hampton Roads, South Florida, Tampa Bay, Fraser Valley, Niagara Region...

I’d add Research Triangle, Piedmont Triad, Connecticut in general and Northwest Arkansas (Fayetteville et al)

[Oryxslayer]

I think I will add a corollary to Palandio's excellent post: the polycentric metropolitan area does not exist in the New World or "settled countries" to use a broader term. You can find such cores in not just the European examples but also India, China, and Africa, even after accounting for their higher populations on average. But basically none in the Americans or Oceania.

Bay Area, Hampton Roads, South Florida, Tampa Bay, Fraser Valley, Niagara Region...

Literally so many! I'd be curious in hearing Oryxslayer's explanation because this just doesn't compute.

Answer: IMO suburbanization=/= Conurbanization. One is multipolar, the other is unipolar. Lets take the example of Los Angeles, not motioned above, but arguably the best example. The metro area is huge, and we call it the LA metro even though at it's maximum extent it includes other identifiable regions. But it includes plenty of other centers of activity: Long Beach, Pasadena, San Bernadino, Irvine, Riverside, Anaheim, Pomona, just to name a few.

The difference is that they all are pulled into orbiting the single star of Los Angeles in our popular imagination, culture, and also population. What can you tell me off hand about Irvine besides a university and Katie Porter? or Pomona besides a fairgrounds? And when we say we are from one of these blobs that created a strong enough gravity well to swallow other cities, its often easier to just say "SF Bay Area" or "Los Angeles" rather than "Burlingame" or "Dimond Bar." This same holds true for South Florida (Miami), Hampton Roads (Norfolk, but fewer people would even know about it), Bay Area (SF, even though it's economically eclipsed by the South Bay sprawl), Tampa Bay (Tampa duh), Lower Mainland/Fraiser (Vancouver), Niagara/Golden Horseshoe (Basically all Toronto now thanks to sprawl).

Basically, people plopped down cities, one became very dominant, and the suburbs for people who wanted to be in the dominant city ballooned outwards and engulfed the identity of what was once unique small cities.

Lets compare this to examples provided by Europe above in the thread. I know there are examples also in China and India, but I am less informed on the topic so will not talk about them. Over a thousand years of human historical development meant there were market towns and villages in the areas that would eventually become multipolar. No town really could establish sovereignty over the rest because none were really all that relevant. Like even today we can say that the now comparatively tiny York has had a greater cultural and historical recognizability then the cities that exist today to it's southwest, and not just because of New York. It was the singular city of size for the traditional North for much of English history, and therefore it's presence and weight lingers on.

The common theme for all conurban regions though is industrialization. A quiet area was suddenly the place to be either because the region was sitting on top of or close to industrial resources made newly accessible, or because of new modes of transportation and supply chains made the region central to industrial production. Because no city previously had prominence, every city grew as one. Compare Leeds to London, one was an established city that subsumed all around it despite their history, the other could not eclipse its rivals. I know what Leeds is thanks to successful marketing, but seemingly not even the entirely of the British political class deems it relevant. I've seen some call it just call it "the North," in obvious contrast to London and the subsumed South. And when we look at Football clubs, just to take one indicator of cultural identity, there isn't even a Leeds Premier league Club right now. And there are at least 5 other high ranked ones in the South Yorkshire region, but they all bear the names of their local town. Compare this to the London Clubs and how they are named.

The best example I can think of for the distinction is Stoke-on-Trent. Six towns all grew as one with the advance of industrialization. None could easily eclipse the others, but growth made them all economically one. So they all became one, slapped with the name of the most central of the six towns. But if you got there today, you can still feel that the place was once six.



This is just all my opinion, and I can see how once would view things differently if they assign more preference to the present situation rather than historical development.

[Sol]

It just doesn't seem clear to me that what you're describing is different from certain American examples. Point taken on Los Angeles, which I wouldn't classify as polycentric, but there are other cities which basically have the same dynamic which you describe of different towns growing into adjacent cities. Even if one is larger, there's not always the same relation of dominance. Some examples:

-Albany, Schenectady, and Troy in New York
-The Wyoming Valley
-The Lehigh Valley
-The Triad
-The Triangle
-Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson
-The Quad Cities (famously!)
-Odessa-Midland
etc. etc.

I don't think it's accurate to say that Durham's growth is because it's a Raleigh suburb--there are distinct but interacting centers of development and employment. In the Research Triangle there are at least four, and that's excluding some important edge city type development in Wake County.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Sometimes the Pearl River Delta is considered the world's largest metro area with 85 million people. Now of course it has 2 very famous cities Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, better known to English speakers as Canton.

[Yeahsayyeah]

Of course as others have already asked, you might ask why certain polycentric metropolitan areas (Upper Silesian, Ruhr, certain areas in Northern France, Wallonia and Northern England,...) are less prominent than monocentric areas of the same population.

E.g. how well known are any of the Yorkshire cities (Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford etc) to people outside the UK?

Only for football clubs and "industrial city somewhere in England", I would think.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Real Gs (who spend too much time following esports) know about Katowice through the various Intel Extreme Masters tournaments held there.

My roommate when I was in Poland this past February met up with his friends from back home (Canada) in order to attend just such a tournament in Katowice.

[mpbond]

Sometimes the Pearl River Delta is considered the world's largest metro area with 85 million people. Now of course it has 2 very famous cities Hong Kong, and Guangzhou, better known to English speakers as Canton.

That could be more comparable to the Northeast Megalopolis in the US. A mostly continuous set of urban areas anchored by very well known cities (Boston-NY-Philly-DC), but with the vast majority of it's ~50 million residents living in much less well known places.