Intercity mobility reveals the hyperbolic geometry of city systems

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2604.04459v1
• Date: Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:12:05 GMT
• Title: Intercity mobility reveals the hyperbolic geometry of city systems
• Abstract summary: We develop a novel geometric model of city systems embedding mobility into a latent hyperbolic geometry.<n>We find a bottom-up emergence of city hierarchies, along which the variations of city-hinterland relations are non-stationary.<n>The revealed urban relational processes of city systems are at the core of the emerging science of cities.
• Score: 21.646650239283186
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: The hierarchy and proximity are key dimensions of urban relational processes, but their interplay in shaping intercity interactions and the underlying structures of city systems remain unclear. We develop a novel geometric model of city systems embedding intercity mobility into a latent hyperbolic geometry, which unravels the measures of hierarchy and proximity accounting for their interplay. It is successfully validated against 12 different nationwide intercity mobility datasets. We find a bottom-up emergence of city hierarchies, along which the variations of city-hinterland relations are non-stationary in terms of their nesting and range properties. Such non-stationarity originates from trade-offs between city hierarchy and hinterland range in determining the formation of city-hinterland structures. Hierarchy- and proximity-dominated urban processes can be elucidated from examining dynamics of the trade-offs. The revealed urban relational processes of city systems are at the core of the emerging science of cities and crucial for spatial planning and regional policymaking.

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