Polycentric urbanization as enclave urbanization: a research agenda with illustrations from the Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR), China

Interest in enclave urbanization has surfaced recently in urban and political geography scholarship. However, little of this work seeks to distinguish either the nature of enclaves from urban agglomerations or their economic ramifications. This study sketches out some of the distinctive features of enclaves and how these are reflected in morphological and functional polycentricity at the urban and inter-urban scales. We note how enclaves may produce important but qualitatively different morphological and functional parallels to ideas found in the extant economic geography literature on industry agglomerations. These parallels - in the guise of 'cities as enclaves', 'clusters of enclaves' and 'enclave to enclave' linkages - suggest some important gaps in our present understandings of, and open new agendas for, the study of urban and regional development as we illustrate with reference to the Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR) in China.