Intercity connectivity and urban innovation
Name
2406.14681v1.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.03 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
90ab7ff1fbe98fb91f4b808099a59a1f
Author(s)
Liang, Xiaofan
Hidalgo, César A
Balland, Pierre-Alexandre
Zheng, Siqi
Wang, Jianghao
Date Issued
April 2024
Journal
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Liang, Xiaofan, Hidalgo, César A, Balland, Pierre-Alexandre, Zheng, Siqi and Wang, Jianghao. 2024. "Intercity connectivity and urban innovation." Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 109.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Urban outputs, from economy to innovation, are known to grow as a power of a city's population. But, since large cities tend to be central in transportation and communication networks, the effects attributed to city size may be confounded with those of intercity connectivity. Here, we map intercity networks for the world's two largest economies (the United States and China) to explore whether a city's position in the networks of communication, human mobility, and scientific collaboration explains variance in a city's patenting activity that is unaccounted for by its population. We find evidence that models incorporating intercity connectivity outperform population-based models and exhibit stronger predictive power for patenting activity, particularly for technologies of more recent vintage (which we expect to be more complex or sophisticated). The effects of intercity connectivity are more robust in China, even after controlling for population, GDP, and education, but not in the United States once adjusted for GDP and education. This divergence suggests distinct urban network dynamics driving innovation in these regions. In China, models with social media and mobility networks explain more heterogeneity in the scaling of innovation, whereas in the United States, scientific collaboration plays a more significant role. These findings support the significance of a city's position within the intercity network in shaping its success in innovative activities.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Real Estate
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2024.102092
