Sustainability, Vol. 11, Pages 2975: Deciphering the Spatial Structures of City Networks in the Economic Zone of the West Side of the Taiwan Strait Through the Lens of Functional and Innovation Networks (Sustainability)

Globalization and the spread of information have made city networks more complex. The existing research on city network structures has usually focused on discussions of regional integration. With the development of interconnections among cities, however, the characterization of city network structures on a regional scale is limited in the ability to capture a network’s complexity. To improve this characterization, this study focused on network structures at both regional and local scales. Through the lens of function and innovation, we characterized the city network structure of the Economic Zone of the West Side of the Taiwan Strait through a social network analysis and a Fast Unfolding Community Detection algorithm. We found a significant imbalance in the innovation cooperation among cities in the region. When considering people flow, a multilevel spatial network structure had taken shape. Among cities with strong centrality, Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Whenzhou had a significant spillover effect, which meant the region was depolarizing. Quanzhou and Ganzhou had a significant siphon effect, which was unsustainable. Generally, urbanization in small and midsize cities was common. These findings provide support for government policy making.