ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs brings together a series of 10 papers that illustrate the range of ways that networks can be used to better understand cities and communities. They employ a wide range of network methods, in a diverse sample of places, at different scales, to answer thorny questions in urban studies. However, together they highlight how network approaches can shed new light on three broad areas of urban inquiry: the nature of community in urban areas, the role of scale and form in urban economic development, and the potential for coordination in fragmented and polycentric regions. In this synthesizing paper, we use these papers to explore how a network approach offers new ways of thinking about these issues. We also use them to guide reflection on two questions: are networks an essential concept in the urban study toolkit, and how can the utility of networks for urban studies be extended further?

摘要

本期《城市事务杂志》汇集了一系列10篇论文，阐述了网络可以用来更好地理解城市和社区的方式。他们在不同地点，不同规模的地方采用广泛的网络方法来回答城市研究中的棘手问题。但是，它们共同强调了网络方法如何能够为城市探究的三个广泛领域提供新的思路：城市社区的性质，规模和形式在城市经济发展中的作用以及在分散的和多中心的地区进行协调的潜力。在这份综合论文中，我们使用这些论文来探索网络方法如何为思考这些问题提供新的方式。我们还使用它们来指导对以下两个问题的思考：网络在城市研究工具包中是否是必不可少的概念，