Global Cities Network

Electromagnetism Analogy

This project attempts to represent cities using an analogy to electromagnetism. I modeled two electric fields of opposite signals for each city:

Repulsive Field: $$R_i(x) = -\alpha \cdot \frac{Pop_i^\beta}{(d(x,x_i)+\epsilon)^k}$$

Attractive Field: $$A_i(x) = +\alpha^\prime \cdot \frac{Pop_i^{\beta^\prime}}{(d(x,x_i)+\epsilon)^{k^\prime}}$$

Calling the sum of the repulsive and attractive effects the Influence, I then calculated the set of parameters which minimized the Influence of Global Cities by cities outside their metropolitan area. The resulting networks are formed by connecting each city to its strongest attractor.

Resulting Networks

Note: This visualization uses straight lines instead of geodesic lines due to file size constraints.