Centrality and the Structure of Urban Interaction: Measures, Concepts, and Applications

Although social network analysis has provided many measures of network position, these are rarely applied to spatial networks. Sociological measures of network structure were constructed to reflect binary interactions and such measures were of limited use in analysis of urban systems. Recently, several measures have been refined to accommodate the asymmetric continuous flaws of people and information across space, making them appropriate for urban models. In this article, we evaluate the applicability of graph theoretic measures to the urban system. We find that graph theoretic conceptualizations of centrality are consistent with theoretical specifications of urban hierarchy. We then apply centrality measures to simulated and actual urban systems. We conclude that such measures elucidate key substantive issues relevant to increasingly complex sociospatial structures.