THE CONNECTED

CITY HOW NETWORKS

ARE SHAPING THE
MODERN METROPOLIS
by ZACHARY P. NEAL
“Michigan State
University”. Published
2013 by Routledge 711
Third Avenue, New York,
NY 10017

By
‫مرمر سعيد عبد الحي غنيم‬
Marmar Saeed Ghoname

A Book Review

Presented to

Prof. Soad Bashandy

Prof. Abdullah Al Attar
2024
Neal has written a great book about transportation, his book shows in particular how
social network analysis can furnish both a theory and a method for the study of cities.
In a grand synthesis of many literatures on social networks, it reveals how networks
operate within cities, as between residents, but also between and among cities, as
important connections of people and economic trade. This book not only provides
essential ideas for thinking about cities, but it also furnishes some of the essential
intellectual apparatus that people will need to navigate their way through this world
in the future. Its breadth will make it appeal to people in many different academic
disciplines, from geography to political science. In addition, its accessibility in terms
of its writing and imagery will make it an important, even indispensable means for
teaching students that range from beginning undergraduates to advanced graduates.

The chapters are grouped into three major sections by the level of analysis and scale
of network they focus on: micro-, meso-, and macro-urban networks.
 Part 1

Chapter 1

Micro-urban Networks. The smallest scale urban networks that might be examined
are the personal social networks that link together the individuals living, working,
and playing in cities. Legendary urbanist Jane Jacobs poignantly described such
relationships, noting that Most of it is ostensibly utterly trivial but the sum is not
trivial at all. The sum of such casual, public contact at a local level … is a feeling
for the public identity of people, a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in
time of personal or neighborhood need. While some of the personal social networks
of urban dwellers are informal and casual, such as the sidewalk friendships Jacobs
describes, others are more formalized, such as the relationships between a local
politician and his or her constituents. Nevertheless, whatever form they might take
the linkages among a city’s people play an important role in city life. The chapters
in the first part of the book explore how.

Chapter 2

Chapter Two asks what role community plays in modern city life? Some have
argued that when people move to big cities, community and feelings of solidarity are
lost and get replaced by isolation and feelings of loneliness. However, adopting a
network-based approach, others have argued that community is alive and well in the
numerous and varied relationships that city dwellers maintain.

Chapter 3

Chapter Three then considers how, in such busy and crowded places as modern
cities, social groups such as subcultures and ethnic enclaves form. The formation of
such tight-knit groups might seem impossible in the big city, but from a network
point of view, having a close circle of friends and acquaintances who all know one
another and belong to the same clubs and organizations helps create pockets of order
in a sea of chaotic diversity.

Chapter 4

Finally, Chapter Four examines why some people are influential in running cities
and controlling urban affairs, while others are relatively powerless. While political
and social influence might seem to depend on individual characteristics such as one’s
leadership ability or wealth, a person’s position in an urban social network can be
even more significant.
Part 2

Meso-urban Networks. Transitioning to a larger scale of network, rather than

focusing on the networks within cities, the second part views the city itself as a kind
of network. More specifically, the second part of the book conceptualizes the city as
a collection of intersecting, interacting, and overlapping networks that bind the many
different parts of the city into an organic whole like a living organism, giving it both
form and function. Unlike the personal social networks within cities, the contents of
these networks are not people, but spaces and institutions.

Chapter 5

Chapter Five concentrates on cities’ physical layout—their form—to consider how

different physical arrangements influence how we experience the city. More than
just aesthetics and efficiency, a city’s infrastructure networks (its streets, sidewalks,
mass transit) guide us to use the city in specific ways.

Chapter 6

Chapter Six focuses on how all the services, organizations, and agencies get
coordinated to keep a complex city functioning, rather than dissolving into
confusion. The delivery of the wide range of urban services such as trash collection,
health care, education, and recreation are rarely the result of a single centralized plan.
More often, they are made possible by a complex network of inter organizational
relationships that allow providers to join forces through collaboration, or to dominate
through competition.

Part 3

Macro-urban networks. The third part of the book shifts to a still broader level of
analysis and larger scale of network, to focus on networks that link entire cities to
one another. Scholars focusing on these networks of cities have argued that they can
be considered within three geographic domains: regional, national, and global.

Chapter 7
Chapter Seven asks how a city becomes a metropolis by looking at how groups of
cities in a particular region are linked together by networks of commuting workers,
partnerships among business firms, and cooperation between local governments.
These regional city networks can transform a single city with a single downtown
area where all the activity is concentrated into a metropolitan area where activity is
concentrated in multiple places.

Chapter 8

Chapter Eight considers how cities are related to one another across longer
distances and larger areas such as an entire country. Often-intercity networks, when
they occur on a national level, serve to establish a national urban system in which
cities play specialized economic and social roles that require a level of urban
interdependence.

Finally, Chapter Nine turns to the global arena, asking what makes a handful of
major ‘world cities’ such as New York, London, and Tokyo so important. Is their
importance related to their giant population size, their prominent businesses, and
their role in history, or is it due to their position in a world city network?