From city centre to centrality places: a methodological proposal

Abstract

Central functions, as buildings and urban functions have moved in the exópolis, both as cause and as effect of the increase of private mobility and new spatial behaviours of their inhabitants. Several urban concepts which were effective up to now, as the opposition between centre and periphery or the idea of one city-one centre, today they are useless to read and analyse those changes. Today centrality is a heterogenic character which belongs to different areas, not just to the central core of consolidated urban areas. This essay proposes an alternative method to classify the aggregation of central functions in the suburb and to study those have the larger effects on the space. This action allows us to reflect on the features and the role of these places of centrality in the territorial pattern.