- Interrelation Between Micro-Blog Hotspots And Urban Spatial Network: An Empirical Analysis Of Tongji-Rim Intellectual-Economic-Zone, Shanghai, Based On Sina Weibo   1773 kb by    Han, Jing & Kong, Lingyu | hjbm333@163.com    Short Outline This paper discusses the interrelationship between social network and urban spatial network. It takes creative people as target group and SINA micro- blog as platform. The basic concepts include projecting social network onto spatial network, testing spatial traits for explanatory power of social networks, and ranking levels of similarity. Abstract Information technology has been making dramatic impacts on the traditional space geography. It changed the way people understanding space, place and time. In a Study of Manuel Castells (1989), the space of flow and the space of place were distinguished. After revision, he argued that the space of flow consists of the technical infrastructure network, the node and hub network, the dominant elite network and websites. Based on this theory and from a micro level of specific group, this paper discusses the interrelationship between social network and urban spatial network. It takes a large number of creative people as target group and China's most popular social media SINA micro-blog as platform. The basic concepts include projecting the social network onto the spatial network, testing various spatial traits for the explanatory power of social networks, and ranking the levels of similarity. As creative class is the main force of a creative city, their behavioral characteristics and spatial distribution are essential to promote the development of the creative city and the innovation economy. Due to the particularity of their work, creative class has closest contact with information technology, and consequently is most influenced. Nowadays micro-blog has become a new way of communication. Creative class gradually form relationship networks on it. This virtual social network is set up on the base of the physical spatial network, so there are necessary connections between them. The intellectual-economic-zone around Tongji University, Shanghai, is currently China's largest design industrial cluster. It mainly homes architectural design studios and urban planning offices and is supplemented by various types of knowledge-based service enterprises such as education and training, landscape design, art and media design, environmental engineering design, automobile design, software design and engineering consulting. There are tens of thousands of high-quality talents, making it an ideal area to study the social network and urban spatial network of creative class. This paper proposes a five-step methodology. First, we collect micro-blogs and interactive records published on the SINA micro-blogging platform by the creative class (about 500 people) around Tongji University for a certain period of time (a month). According to the social network analysis approach, scale, density and centrality of the social network constructed by the creative classare measuredandvisualized. Second, we build a three- dimensional coordinate system using the map and the time line for eachcreative people, mark the point of everymicro-blog (according to its map location and time) published by the blogger in the survey duration, and overlay allthe bloggers' data to construct a micro-blog time- spacecube,which contains micro-blogs by all individuals.Third, according to the results of the social network analysis, we divide the comprehensive influence of the social network individuals into several levels, and then replace the micro-blog points in the cubewith bubbles in different color and size(the higher one’slevel ranks, themore striking color and larger size his bubbleswill be drawn with). In this case, we at last achieve a projection from the social network to the space-time cube. Fourth, based on the map, we compute five types of graph analysis measures on spatial networks: Reach, Gravity, Betweenness, Closenessand Straightness. Last, we successively insertthe Reach, Gravity, Betweenness, Closeness and Straightness map into the cube to matchthe distribution of the micro-blog bubbles, and find out the spatial traitswhich best explain the visualized social networks. The results of this paper help to provide information on how to build creative environment considering both social and spatial networks, and develop the methodology of “Network Analysis” in space theory studies of the information age. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper