Rethinking the Optimal City Size from the Perspective of the City Network

Abstract

The optimal city size is an intuitive and clear indicator of whether the current state of the city is efficient. So it is determined by the internal factors of the city and the way they are organized if the city operates as a container only. In the picture where the city network has become a normality of the existing economic organizations, the optimal city size theory, including the concept, the mechanism and the path need to be rethought. Therefore, this paper starts from the essential concept of optimal city size and analyzes the influences of urban network on urban production and internal attribute characteristics, and further briefly analyzes the influence path and mechanism of the urban net-work on the optimal city size.