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
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.
PACS: 89.75.Fb – Structures and organization in complex systems / 89.75.-k – Complex systems
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 2006
