Intercity Connectivity Accelerates Innovation

(In Review, Leading author)

The work is developed with Dr. Jianghao Wang, Dr. Cesar Hidalgo, Dr. Pierre-Alexandre Balland, and Dr. Siqi Zheng.

Urban outputs, from crime to innovation, are known to grow as a function of a city’s population. But since large cities tend to also be central in transportation and communication networks, the effects attributed to city size may be confounded with those of intercity connectivity. Here, we map networks for cities in the world’s two largest economies (the United States and China) to explore whether a city’s position in network of communication, human mobility, or scientific collaboration explains variance in urban outcomes that is unaccounted for by population.