The currently observed urban rescaling is characterized by two opposing trends: the regionalization of core cities and their metropolization. Such restructuring processes have consequences for a city-region's spatial and functional structure, even in traditionally multi-core metropolitan regions. This paper looks at the hypothesis that city-based business sectors belonging to the knowledge economy, dependent on their function, transaction costs and the need for geographical proximity for innovation, form different polycentric business patterns engendering either metropolization or regionalization. The aim of the paper is to analyse the metropolization and regionalization of knowledge-intensive business activities at both a municipal and a locational level, thereby shedding light on the complexity of polycentric business structures in traditional multi-core metropolitan regions. The spotlight here is on the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, a prime example of a polycentric metropolitan region without a traditionally dominant metropolitan core. We show that metropolization can be seen as an agglomerating phenomenon, applying also to traditional multi-core metropolitan regions, while-with specific reference to the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region-"regionalization" would seem to have only a slight effect on the knowledge economy.
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