Uncovering Network Heterogeneity of China’s Three Major Urban Agglomerations from Hybrid Space Perspective-Based on TikTok Check-In Records

Bowen Xiang, Rushuang Chen and Gaofeng Xu ()
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Bowen Xiang: School of Urban Design, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Rushuang Chen: China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp. Ltd., Chengdu 610041, China
Gaofeng Xu: School of Architecture and Design, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

Land, 2022, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: Urban agglomeration is an essential spatial support for the urbanization strategies of emerging economies, including China, especially in the era of mediatization. From a hybrid space perspective, this paper invites TikTok cross-city check-in records to empirically investigate the vertical and flattened distribution characteristics of check-in networks of China’s three major urban agglomerations by the hierarchical property, community scale, and node centrality. The result shows that (1) average check-in flow in the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, and Pearl River Delta network decreases in descending order, forming a Z-shaped, single-point radial, and N-shaped structure, respectively. (2) All three urban agglomerations exhibit a nexus community structure with the regional high-flow cities as the core and the surrounding cities as the coordinator. (3) Geographically proximate or recreation-resource cities have a high degree of hybrid spatial accessibility, highlighting their nexus role. Finally, the article further discusses the flattened evolutionary structure of the check-in network and proposes policy recommendations for optimizing check-in networks at both the digital and geospatial levels. The study gains from the lack of network relationship perspective in the study of location-based social media and provides a novel research method and theoretical support for urban agglomeration integration in the context of urban mediatization.

Keywords: urban network; hybrid space; TikTok; three major urban agglomerations of China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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