Middle East city networks and the “new urbanism”

Abstract

Contemporary analysts of Middle East cities have been slow to take up new urbanism’s challenge to perceive the region’s cities via a social network lens. Yet a tenuous body of work does exist, most of it employing the network-as-metaphor, with some authors delving more deeply in exciting and promising ways to examine city networks, their implications, and the resultant regional system of cities. This essay highlights a number of the major network concepts available, including connectivity, centrality, black holes, brokers, levels of analysis, city system and density. Contributions by a range of regional specialists are presented in the context of the ongoing search for understanding of the evolving nature of city networks in the Middle East. The essay concludes with a discussion of insights network analysis might contribute to questions of the distribution of power, community, hierarchy and change across the longue duree.