Identification of urban subcentres by means of land use, electric consumption and CO ₂ production. The case of Barcelona Metropolitan Area (RMB)

Read In urban economics theory, the activity index has been measured based on the quantity of workers in the zone and the land-use density. In general, most of the studies in the field of the urban land economics incorporate these indicators as input for evaluating the urban structure, the identification of urban subcenters and the definition of mobility patterns. Urban subcenters are territorial concentration of workers and in that sense; they define the urban mobility patterns over a metropolitan area. However, there are more possibilities to identify them. This paper proposes a new definition of sub-centers. Density of workers is complemented with the observation of four approaches for the analysis of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. These four approaches are the urban lands patterns (based on CORINE land cover information), the mobility of workers (from data of the Spanish Census), electric consumption (from information of the electric companies) and the estimated CO ₂ production. Consequently, the urban structure will be defined based on these four approaches, which also will validate the previously defined 15 subcenters of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area.