Abstract
Recently, literature on urban network research from the perspective of ?rm networks has been increasing. This research mainly used data from the headquarters and branches of all 2581 listed manufacturing companies in the Yangtze River Delta from 1990 to 2017, and studied the urban network through an interlocking network model that quantifies the links between enterprises. The results showed that the spatial distribution of listed manufacturing industries in the Yangtze River Delta was relatively concentrated, and cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou were hot spots for the spatial distribution of listed manufacturing industries. However, Fuyang, Suqian, Chizhou, Lishui and other network edge cities were less distributed in manufacturing. The urban network of the Yangtze River Delta has significant hierarchical characteristics. The urban network of the Yangtze River Delta presents a multi-center network development mode with Shanghai as the center and Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Hefei as the sub-centers. Moreover, we found that the development of inter-city connections in the Yangtze River Delta was driven by network mechanisms of priority attachment and path dependence. The radiating capacity and agglomeration capacity of cities in the Yangtze River Delta have a strong polarization characteristic. The core cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Hefei have much higher network radiation capabilities than network aggregation capabilities. However, other non-core cities and network edge cities have weak network radiation capabilities, and mainly accept network radiation from core cities. It enriches the research of urban networks based on real inter-?rm connections, and provides ideas for the wider regional study and the combination of econometric techniques and social network analysis.
Highlights
The rapid development of information technology and the resulting increase in inter-city linkages enables urban network an important paradigm for studying urban systems (Castells, 2001; Zhao et al, 2015)
Coe proves that cities with high-level producer service companies tend to have higher resource agglomeration and diffusion capabilities, which has a greater impact on the global commodity chain (GCC) and the World City Network (WCN) (Coe et al, 2010)
This study mainly uses data from the headquarters and branches of all 2581 listed manufacturing companies in the Yangtze River Delta from 1990 to 2017, and studies the urban network through an interlocking network model that quantifies the links between enterprises
Summary
The rapid development of information technology and the resulting increase in inter-city linkages enables urban network an important paradigm for studying urban systems (Castells, 2001; Zhao et al, 2015). Since Beaverstock (Beaverstock et al, 1999) constructed the roster of world cities based on the produce service connections between cities, diverse kinds of inter-city linkages, including individuals, information, services, and goods, have been widely used to measure urban networks with different spatial scales (Alderson et al, 2010; Mahutga et al, 2010; Liu & Derudder, 2013). With the further development of fragmentation of production, global production network, and global city network research, the influencing factors of urban networks are increasing (Taylor et al, 2008; Mukhopadhyay, 2016; Csomós, 2017). Industrial, and technological gaps, as well as innovation capacity, are considered to affect urban networks (Hoekman et al, 2010; Lai, 2018)
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