Research on the Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Provincial Urban Network from the Perspective of Local Governance—Based on the Data of the Top 100 Enterprises in Four Categories in Fujian Province

Jialiang Zhao, Suqiong Wei and Qingmu Su ()
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Jialiang Zhao: School of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China
Suqiong Wei: School of Geographical Sciences, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou 350007, China
Qingmu Su: School of Architecture and Planning, Fujian University of Technology, Fuzhou 350118, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-17

Abstract: With the development of the division of labor in product value chains and the specialization of urban functions, the network link structure model among cities is being reshaped. Studying the structure of urban networks and its related theories in the context of scale, place and policy is still an open area. This study constructs a research framework to study the urban network formed by the synergy of scale, place and policy. It mainly takes enterprises in different industries in different provinces as the empirical scale and object, and uses methods such as a social network and Geo Detector to analyze the characteristics and influencing factors of the provincial network relationship mode of enterprises among cities. The main findings are as follows. (1) Firstly, the urban network linkage in general shows strong coastal centrality and small-world network characteristics. The urban network linkages reflected by different types of enterprises all have obvious spatial directionality and polarization effects. (2) Coastal cities have strong centrality, and the specialized division of urban functions emerges, with large cities becoming a concentration area for different types of corporate headquarters, while small- and medium-sized cities carry a large number of processing and assembly enterprises. (3) The networks of different types of enterprises have different sensitivity to each influencing factor. For example, emerging industries have the strongest correlation with the economic scale and social services; manufacturing industries are most influenced by the public services, administrative level and development zone level; and service industries are most influenced by science and technology expenditure and the same metropolitan area. In conclusion, this study contributes to the understanding of network heterogeneity at the provincial scale and provides policy support for the local governance scale, as well as promotes the expansion of the urban network theory to network governance applications in the “flow space”.

Keywords: local governance; urban network characteristics; synergy framework; provincial scale; enterprise network perspective (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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