Urban Networks

Micro-Urban Networks: Within Cities

A central challenge for urban researchers has been specifying the causal connection between the aggregate features of cities, such as neighborhoods and segregation, and the individual characteristics of urban dwellers, such as lifestyles and demographics. Micro-urban networks—the patterns of relationships that exist among people and objects in cities—have been identified as the missing link that bridges these two urban phenomena. This approach has a long history, originating with Georg Simmel's 1903 essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in which he aimed to link the pace and overstimulation of modern cities to a blasé and reserved attitude by pointing to the restructuring of personal relationships (for example, as instrumental rather than intimate) necessitated by urban life. Since this early application, micro-urban networks have been examined in a wide range of contexts using several different empirical methodologies.

Many researchers have examined micro-urban networks that focus on the relationships among people living in cities, seeking to understand how broad urban patterns and processes are the consequence of these relationships. Since Simmel's work at the beginning of the 20th century, many have hypothesized the decline of community in cities: as cities grow larger, individuals' sense of community and belonging declines. The influence of city size on one's personal social networks clarifies why this may happen. A person living in a large city may know and interact with large numbers of others, but with a fixed amount of time in each day. This increase in the size of the social network (i.e., quantity) requires a corresponding decrease in the depth and duration (i.e., quality) of each of those relationships. With the advanced technological infrastructures that cities provide, many of these relationships have shifted from face-to-face interactions on the street to virtual interactions on the Internet, leading some to ask whether this transition will usher another wave of community decline or rather if the ease of maintaining electronically mediated relationships will permit greater intimacy and promote the formation of social capital. Closely related to these issues is the role of urban personal networks in facilitating place attachment, which refers to individuals' emotional connection to a particular location, such as neighborhood pride. Through repeated interactions with the same others, a merely physical space can become a socially relevant place, around which residents structure their daily lives and invest their economic and emotional resources.

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