Networked or Un-Networked? A Preliminary Study on KIBS-Based Sustainable Urban Development: The Case of China

Increasingly pertinent linkages of cities via knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) in the 21st century have opened a new window for academia to reconsider the approach to achieving urban sustainability. In this study, city network was investigated with an aim of identifying its attributes in the framework of sustainable urban development. Data about China’s KIBS, which are compiled in an inter-regional input–output table, were calculated following the procedure of social network analysis. It was found that: (1) the degree of nodes (i.e., out-degree, in-degree and betweenness) in China varies distinctively from city to city; (2) the hierarchy of the city network is very tiny; and (3) that the network structure is subject to both “a small world” and core–periphery effects. Furthermore, city nodes in China fall into four categories, namely high centrality and power, high centrality and low power, low centrality and high power, and low centrality and power. The implication is that governmental efforts should be made to secure a reasonable decentralization of key city nodes to ensure that urban sustainability is built on a city-to-city basis