Title

The multiplex relations between cities: a lexicon-based approach to detect urban systems.

Authors

Tongjing, Wang; Meijers, Evert; Wang, Huijuan

Abstract

Cities relate to other cities in many ways, and much scholarly effort goes into uncovering those relationships. Building on the principle that strongly related cities will co-occur frequently in texts, we propose a novel method to classify those toponym co-occurrences using a lexicon-based text-mining method. Millions of webpages are analysed to retrieve how 293 Chinese cities are related in terms of six types: industry, information technology, finance, research, culture and government. Each class displays different network patterns, and this multiplexity is mapped and analysed. Further refinement of this lexicon-based approach can revolutionize the study of inter-urban relationships.

Subjects

CITIES & towns; URBANIZATION; GEOGRAPHIC names; TEXT mining; INFORMATION technology

Publication

Regional Studies, 2023, Vol 57, Issue 8, p1592

ISSN

0034-3404

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1080/00343404.2022.2120978