Not all paths lead to Rome: Analysing the network of sister cities

TL;DR

This paper examines the structure of sister city networks, revealing their highly assortative nature and the lack of influence of geographical proximity on city pairings, with insights into central nodes and country clusters.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the structural properties of sister city networks, highlighting their assortativity and clustering patterns, which were previously underexplored.

Findings

Sister city networks are highly assortative.

Geographical proximity does not significantly influence sister city pairings.

Identified key central nodes and country clusters in the networks.

Abstract

This work analyses the practice of sister city pairing. We investigate structural properties of the resulting city and country networks and present rankings of the most central nodes in these networks. We identify different country clusters and find that the practice of sister city pairing is not influenced by geographical proximity but results in highly assortative networks.