Abstract: |
With an eye to the research transformation from hierarchy structure to city network, this paper overviews the ancient studies about urban system, and then discusses the transformation contents of city network studies, the characteristics of network structure, the relationships between each city and other cities in city network, etc.. The results and conclusions are as follows. (1) From city node perspective of each city, we can combine the centrality of city hierarchy with the nodality of city network, and analyze cities’ features from four quadrants consisted of centrality and nodality of cities; (2) From city relations and trajectories perspective, the transformations are changing from the characteristics of onedirectional way and asymmetric to bi-directional way and diversified trajectories. We compare the two theoretical methods from many aspects including linkage direction, relation subject, the volumes, relational space, and the paths, etc.; (3) We elaborate the city network structure from the perspectives of points, lines, and subgroups; (4) According to the basic traits of city network, the relations between each city and others in city network can be analyzed including nodes, trajectories, volumes, cohesions, and risk resistance capacity. |