THE NETWORK CITY Paul Craven Barry Wellman Research Paper No. 59 Centre for Urban and Community Studies and Department of Sociology University of Toronto July, 1973 To appear in a special issue on "The Community" of Sociological Inquiry. ABSTRACT The network approach to urban studies can be differentiated from other approaches by its insistence on the primacy of structures of interpersonal linkages, rather than the classification of social units according to their individual characteristics. Network analysis is an approach, leading to the formulation of particular kinds of questions, such as "who is linked to whom?" and "what is the structure and content of their relational network;" at the same time it is a methodology for their investigation. Following a discussion of network analytic methods, several of the key issues in urban studies are investigated from this perspective. Interpersonal ties in the city, migration, resource allocation, neighbor­ hood and connnunity are examined in terms of the network structures and processes that order and integrat~ urban activities. These structures and processes reveal U1emselves to be ever more complex and extensive at each level of the investigation. A view of the city itself as a network of networks is proposed. It is the organization of urban life by networks that makes the scale and diversity of the city a source of strength rather than chaos, while it is precisely that scale and diversity which maKes the complex and widely-ramified network structures possible. The flexibility inherent in network structures can accommodate a variety of situations, while variations in the content and intensity of network linkages allows for the co-ordination and integration of widely different people and activities. It is the structural and processual adaptability of networks which fits them so admirably for their role as a central organizing principle in urban life. 1 The .Network City The rich, and often bewildering, complexity of social life in the city is such that the sociologist who would seek to understand it has always had to adopt some strategy of analysis to guide his inquiry. More often than not, he has approached this problem by way of a simple "sorting" strategy. He has grouped individuals and institutions into various pigeonholes, representing their individual social or organizational characteristics, so that people might be sorted into slots such as "middle class"; institutions might be classified as "social agencies"; localities might be tagged as "suburbia." Once the units have been sorted into categories according to their independent characteristics, the sociologist classically proceeds to make sense of the classification scheme through the comparison of inhabitants of different slots. He might endeavor to find out, for example, whether "working class suburbanites" interact more than "middle class suburbanites," or whether "partisan" or "non-partisan" city governments are more effective in policy implementation. There are a number of problems with this strategy of inquiry and analysis. For our purposes, it will be sufficient to point out two of them: First of all, the process of categorization by individual characteristics depends on two assumptions that deserve, at the least, serious examination. It assumes, first, that the classification categories employed are intrinsically meaningful - that the world is, in fact, organized along lines that lend it to this kind of classification. Second, and related to this, is the 2 implicit assumption that the characteristics of individuals - abstracted and pigeonholed-- are really independent characteristics - independent of one another in the make-up of the individual, and independent, as well, of the social context in which that individual is found. The outcome of this second assumption is that the process of categorization by individual characteristics is prior to the investigation of social interaction. In this paper we hope to show that a quite different strategy of analysis is available: one which gives priority to the way social life is organized, through empirically observable systems of interaction and reliance, systems of resource allocation, and systems of integration and co-ordination. Sociologists who take this approach see the city not so much as a conglomeration of people and institutions, but as a multitude of social networks, overlapping and interacting in various ways. This approach emphasizes such questions as "Who is linked to whom?", "What is the content of their relationship?", and ''What is the structure of their relational network?" The significance of these kinds of questions will be explored in the pages that follow. For the time being, we shoula note that questions of classification and categorization of individual social units are not completely done away with in this model; rather, they yield pride of place to the structures of social interaction. Consequently, when classification is introduced it is always in the context of interactional systems, rather than in an abstracted and reified way. 3 It remains, however, the fundamental concern of network analysis to inquire into the nature of interactional and organizational links between social units. Network studies of the city can be seen as a perspective leading us to concentrate on certain kinds of data and certain kinds of questions, and as a methodology for the analysis of those data. Fortunately, much data has already been collected on the kinds of interpersonal relations of urbanites. In addition to analyzing simple two-person ties, sociologists have begun to look at the complex structure of social linkages in the city, examining networks of relationships between institutions as well as interpersonal networks. Using data specifically collected for network study, or re-casting data collected with other approaches in mind, these investigators have at their disposal mathematical techniques which help generate insights that can be non-obvious and counter-intuitive. For example, matrix algebra is used to elicit information about important "indirect" ties between people or institutions not directly or obviously related to each other (see the section below). Unfortunately, little in the way of a comprehensive overview or evaluatjon of urban network research has appeared to date (but see Mitchell, 1969; Bott, 1971; Barnes, 1972; Tilly, 1973). Indeed, much of the work is so recent that it has not yet found its way into the academic journals. Furthermore, many of the stuqies of urban ties discussed in this paper were performed before a self-conscious strategy of network analysis in urban studies had developed. While 4 it is quite beyond our scope in this paper to provide such an over­ view, we shall attempt to outline the contribution such analyses have made to the elucidation of some key problems in urban studies, and to organize this paper around such themes. First, we shall discuss more precisely what is meant by the term, "social network," and how such networks might be studied. Then we shall discuss some basic issues in urban studies in terms of network analysis. We shall begin with the microsociological issue of the nature of interpersonal ties in the city, and end with the macrosociological question of the social organization, integration and co-ordination of the city as a whole. It is our belief (a) that most urban phenomena can be best comprehended through the analysis of network processes, and (b) that networks enable effective use to be made of the city's size and diversity by facilitating the connections between urban individuals, cormnunities, groups and organizations which enhance their co-ordinated specialized activities. 2 What is a Social Network? A good general definition of social network is given by Mitchell (1969:2) who says that a network is "a specific set of linkages among a defined set of persons, with the additional property that the characteristics of these linkages as a whole may be used to interpret the social behavior of the persons involved." For our purposes, we would have to expand this definition somewhat, and point out that the units linked together to form a network need not necessarily be individual persons, but may be other, larger, social units as well. They may be, for example, such units as families, tribes, corporations, 5 or complexes of corporations. In the case of corporations, to be sure, linkages such as interlocking directorships may appear to be between individual people, but in such a context, these people are in reality representatives of corporations, and the latter are the true units of analysis. 3 There are two widely-used methods of representing social networks on paper: by means of a graph or of a matrix. A graph is a picture of a social network, with points on the page representing the units, and lines between the points representing links. If the links are relationships that go only in one "direction," then the lines will have arrowheads indicating this. For instance, such relations1d.ps as "being a brother" always go in two directions - that is, they are reciprocal. If Joe is a brother of Tom, then Tom is a brother of Joe. Some relationships, for instance "being a debtor," go only in one direction - they are non-reciprocal. Other relationships, such as "feels close to," may be either reciprocal or non-reciprocal. Figure 1 is a graphic representation of a hypothetical social network of five individuals. Figure 1 here If we assume that the points numbered one through five in Figure 1 represent people, and that the lines between them represent the relationship "feels close to," then we can interpret the graph of this network as follows: person 1 feels close to persons 2 and 3, while person 3 feels close to person 1 in return. Person 2 feels 6 close to person 5 and person 3 feels close to person 2, but neither of these relationships is reciprocated. Finally, persons 3 and 4 feel close to each other. While graphs are useful visual representations of networks, matrix representations are more useful for mathematical analysis.