Eur. Phys. J. B 50, 221-225 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00066-4

The backbone of a city

¹ Scuola Superiore di Catania, Catania, Italy
² Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Catania, and INFN Sezione di Catania, Catania, Italy
³ Dipartimento di Progettazione dell'Architettura, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

Corresponding author: ^a latora@ct.infn.it

Received: 7 November 2005
Revised: 5 December 2005
Published online: 20 February 2006

Abstract

Recent studies have revealed the importance of centrality measures to analyze various spatial factors affecting human life in cities. Here we show how it is possible to extract the backbone of a city by deriving spanning trees based on edge betweenness and edge information. By using as sample cases the cities of Bologna and San Francisco, we show how the obtained trees are radically different from those based on edge lengths, and allow an extended comprehension of the “skeleton” of most important routes that so much affects pedestrian/vehicular flows, retail commerce vitality, land-use separation, urban crime and collective dynamical behaviours.