Is the Urban World Small? The Evidence for Small World Structure in Urban Networks

Uncovering Links Between Urban Studies and Network Science

“…For example, although the visibility graphs in Natapov et al (2018), are deemed to be representations of navigational decisions within the street network, the authors note that the organisation of these visuospatial networks share morphological similarities with other natural networks, suggesting that common organizational principles underlie network structure. This echoes Bettencourt and West's (2010) suggestion of the possibility of a 'unified theory of urban living' which would corroborate the starting point of Neal's (2018) analysis of whether small world network structures are ubiquitous in urban networks. However, there are also counterarguments to ascribing ontological status to urban networks, which would assume these exist independent from an abstraction or a deliberate choice on the part of the researchers.…”

“…analysis of the making and dissolution of research and development collaboration in a region, see Broekel and Bednarz 2018). In addition, some papers take a broad view by asking questions about the evolution of this field through bibliometric analysis (Peris et al 2018), or about the quality of empirical evidence derived from network analyses of urban data (Neal 2018).…”

“…These scalar differences do not imply that there is a critical scalar disjuncture in the literature that would render the notion Burban network^incoherent. For example, Neal (2018) shows how researchers studying urban networksboth networks of cities and networks in citieshave sometimes participated in the same kinds of exercises, for example by exploring whether the network has small world characteristics. Second, and cross-cutting this scalar focus, are the different urban processes captured by the network-analytical framework.…”

“…However, there are also counterarguments to ascribing ontological status to urban networks, which would assume these exist independent from an abstraction or a deliberate choice on the part of the researchers. Some of these counterarguments surface in Neal's (2018) findings, as he shows how the absence of a formal index guided by a specific decision rule may overestimate the ubiquity of small world structures. This doubt over the possibility of a unified understanding of urban networks is shared by many who would otherwise be willing to buy into network-analytical approaches (see O'Sullivan and Mason 2015).…”

The Evolution and Growth Patterns of the Road Network in a Medium-Sized Developing City: A Historical Investigation of Changchun, China, from 1912 to 2017

“…The frequency of the degree of 3 was very close to that of the degree of 4 in 1939 and 1946, which shows a preference for the grid network in Japanese planning. The average path length and clustering coefficient are two main indexes to determine whether it is a small world network [64,65]. The average path length represents the depth of the urban road transportation systems, which requires two nodes in the network to be accessible through as few edges as possible.…”