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This article looks at polycentrism, recent or historical, on the scale of the Central Belt. Polycentrism on the metropolitan scale can be proven historically in the Glasgow region, but it has never really existed in either Edinburgh or the Central Belt area that separates it from Glasgow. The historical background of the two cities reveals a population expansion that differs in every way - political, cultural and economic - and that has given rise to a tradition of competition between the two cities. Successive boundary changes have redrawn the Scottish institutional landscape, intensifying this competition, while at the same time untying the historical links that had formed between the two cities and their neighbouring towns.