Are larger cities more central in urban networks: A meta-analysis

Abstract

As cities develop more and longer-range external relations, some have challenged the long-standing notion that population size indicates a city's power in its urban system. But are population size and network centrality really independent properties in practice, or do larger cities tend to be more central in urban networks? To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature search and meta-analysed 41 reported correlations between city size and degree centrality. The results show that population size and degree centrality are significantly and positively correlated for cities across various urban systems (r = 0.77), but the correlation varies by network scale and type. The size-centrality association is weaker for global economic and transportation networks (r = 0.43), and stronger for non-global social and communication networks (r = 0.91). This clarifies seemingly contradictory predictions in the literature regarding the association betweensize and centrality for cities.