Estructura urbana y policentrismo en el Área Metropolitana de Concepción

From the perspective of the functional model, the urban structure of the Metropolitan Area of Concepcion (Chile) is analyzed. The main objective is to identify and characterize the urban centers that comprise it as a result of the changes in the metropolitan population and its mobility, specifically with the use of employment indicators and density functions. The results approximate to an understanding of the hierarchical organization of the settlements and their centralities. This clarifies some of the patterns in the structure of the model, both monocentric and polycentric, which is a point of debate in discussions of metropolitan urban structures. The contributions of the research point to ways of describing and characterizing the behavior of the functional structure of the leading example of a metropolitan model in the south of the country.