全球城市技术合作网络的拓扑结构特征与空间格局

The Topology Structure and Spatial Pattern of Global City Technical Cooperation Network

采用2015年PCT专利数据,构建全球城市技术合作网络。利用复杂网络分析和空间分析方法研究全球城市技术合作网络的拓扑结构与空间分布。研究发现:拓扑结构上,全球城市技术合作网络的密度较低,城市节点对外联系强度极不均衡。网络为无标度网络,社团结构明显。空间格局上,全球技术合作网络中城市节点的专利总量和对外联系次数都呈一定区域性,城市节点主要通过全球知识网络获取知识。巴黎和东京无论是专利产出还是合作数量都具有领先优势,对外联系紧密,枢纽性强。网络中城市节点度中心性的空间分布上与专利产出的分布格局基本相同,而介数中心性的分布格局更为集中。

In the background of economic globalization, the technology globalization has become significant.International technical collaboration and R&D activities are major forms of technology globalization. Cities are the engine of innovation and economic development. Due to the development of transportation technology and telecommunication technology, cities are getting closer and the impact of geography distance is weakened.By providing good entrepreneurial environment, cities attract talents, information and capital from all over the world. As a result, innovation is the major function of cities. Global cities make great efforts to become the global science and technology innovation centers with world influence. These kind of centers are cities with leading innovation abilities and most of them are hubs of innovation activities. Patents are an important indicator of measuring technology development and innovation activities. Exploring cities’ role in the global technical cooperation networks is key to understand global technical cooperation pattern. Meanwhile, it is also meaningful for Chinese researchers to explore what position Chinese cities are in and how to construct Chinese cities as global science and technology innovation centers with world influence. Although plenty of articles have focused on the global technical cooperation network at multiple scales such national, regional, urban and community scales, few research has focused on the global city technical cooperation network. The global city technical cooperation network is constructed based on 2015 public PCT patent data. By complex network analyzing methods and spatial analyzing methods, this article demonstrates the topology structure and spatial pattern of global city technical cooperating activities. The results show that: In terms of the topological structure, the density of the network is relatively low, which means the strength of linkages in the network are unbalanced.The network is scale-free network and has prominent city nodes. The network has significant group structure and there are 11 groups which contain over 50 nodes. In terms of spatial pattern, cities with higher patent output distribute in zonal pattern. Cities with more links with others distribute in the area of Calgary(Canada), Silicon Valley(USA) and Boston-Cambridge-New York-Philadelphia(United States) of North America, Paris metropolitan(France), Greater London(United Kingdom), Randstad(Netherland), Essen(Germany) and Basel(Switzerland) of Europe, Tokyo(Japan), Seoul(South Korea), Beijing(China), the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomerations(China) and the Pearl River Delta(China) of East Asia. Tokyo and Paris are in the leading position in both total patent output and number of linkages. The spatial distribution of degree centrality is similar with the distribution of the patent output. Moreover, the distribution of nodes’ betweenness centrality is more concentrated than nodes’ degree centrality. The ranks of Beijing and Shanghai’s betweenness are higher than Shenzhen’s. The reason is that Beijing is the capital city of china. And Beijing holds a variety of universities,institutes and high-tech companies, which provides Beijing with science and technology innovation. Shanghai has a large number of FDI, and it has close connection with foreign companies to do transnational R&D activities. However, Shenzhen has relatively less links with cities in foreign countries, which means the technology output of Shenzhen still depends on its own market. This phenomenon is due to the special immigration culture, open market mechanism and competitive environment.