City Network

City networks are the connections between cities.

These networks can be of different nature and of different importance. In modern conceptions of cities, these networks play an important role in understanding the nature of cities. City networks can be physical connections to other places, such as railways, canals or scheduled flights. City network also exist in immaterial form, such as trade, global finance, markets, migration, cultural links, shared social spaces or shared histories. There are also networks of religious nature, in particular through pilgrimage.

The city itself is then regarded as the node where different networks run together. Some of these networks are more powerful than others, for networks of global finance are currently dominant. Some urban thinkers have indeed argued that cities can only be understood if the context of the city's connections is understood.


It has been argued that city networks are a key ingredient of what defines a city, alongside with the sheer number of people (density) and the particular way of life in cities.

Social networking
Types
  • City
  • Personal
  • Professional
  • Sexual
  • Value
Networks
  • Distributed social network
  • Enterprise social networking
  • Mobile social network
  • Personal knowledge networking
Services
  • List of social networking websites
  • List of virtual communities with more than 100 million users
Concepts and
theories
  • Assortative mixing
  • Interpersonal bridge
  • Organizational network analysis
  • Small world experiment
  • Social aspects of television
  • Social capital
  • Social data revolution
  • Social exchange theory
  • Social identity theory
  • Social network analysis
  • Social web
  • Structural endogamy
Models and
processes
  • Aggregation
  • Change detection
  • Collaboration graph
  • Collaborative consumption
  • Giant Global Graph
  • Lateral communication
  • Lateral diffusion
  • Lateral media
  • Social graph
  • Social network analysis software
  • Social networking potential
  • Social pyramid
  • Social television
  • Structural cohesion
Economics
  • Collaborative finance
  • Social commerce
Phenomena
  • Community recognition
  • Complex contagion
  • Consequential strangers
  • Friend of a friend
  • Friendship paradox
  • Six degrees of separation
  • Social invisibility
  • Social network game
  • Social occultation
Related topics
  • Researchers
  • User profile
  • Viral messages
  • Virtual community

Famous quotes containing the words city and/or network:

    “Hell is a city much like London—
    A populous and a smoky city;
    There are all sorts of people undone,
    And there is little or no fun done;
    Small justice shown, and still less pity.”
    —Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

    “Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)