Australian and Chinese urban networks
The Globalisation and World Cities (GaWC) research network is an academic think tank and research organisation exploring the geographical contours of the ‘world city network’ (WCN), a transnational urban network connecting the business centres of the world’s major cities. GaWC research has remedied certain data deficiencies that hampered previous WCN research. Even so, GaWC studies have largely neglected the potential of social network analysis (SNA), which is a productive field of enquiry concerned with determining patterns of interaction in social and economic systems. SNA seems applicable to WCN themes, and the EU-funded CITYCONNECT project aimed to explore possible cross-fertilisation between both fields. Administered under the Seventh Framework Programme's (FP7) Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowships (IOF) Programme, the project ran for three years to September 2014. The study examined the evolution of networking among world cities in general and between Australian and Chinese cities in particular, but also explored the implications for European centres. Since CITYCONNECT built on a number of research agendas pursued at Australia's Monash University, the project's research included an Australian angle. The work examined the response of Australia's major cities, Melbourne and Sydney to the increased prosperity and connectivity of equivalent Chinese cities. The project work involved three main areas. First, the team reviewed the assumptions underlying existing models of urban networks. Subsequent research extended existing models of urban networks, using methods outlined in the SNA literature. Additional work explored the potential of new developments in the diagrammatic visualisation of urban networks. The project's research was published in various geographical and planning journals. CITYCONNECT resulted in improved understanding of the potential for application of SNA to WCN themes. Such work also helped to trace the evolution of cities in a context of global connectivity.
Keywords
Urban networks, social network analysis, World City Network, Globalisation and World Cities, connectivity
