Mathematical Modeling of the Spatial Structure of the City to Identify and Determine the Significance of its Iimpact on the Economic Performance of the City

Polycentric planning practices aimed at addressing the challenges of urban population growth and environmental pollution raises the questions about the effectiveness of its implementation. Furthermore, the relationship between polycentricity and economic performance is poorly explored. The USA metropolitan areas are studied in this paper. The aim of the paper is to formally evaluate the polycentric structure of the metro areas and determine the relationship between polycentric planning strategy and economic benefits of the city. We use employment density data and local Moran Index to detect subcenters. We also developed special polycentricity metric based on the assumption of optimizing the daily trips of citizens which has not been taken into account before. Ordinary least squares and two-stage least-squares models based on Cobb-Douglas production function are utilized for assessment the influence of spatial structure. The paper concludes that polycentricity is associated with higher labor productivity, namely, the addition of one subcenter increases the GDP per worker by 0.8 %.