city networks membership dataset
A snapshot of city network membership and environmental collaboration between local governments
This dataset represents the most comprehensive available accounting of city government memberships, as of late-2017, in city networks (TMNs), covering 84 networks and 10,343 cities in 208 countries. This accounts specifically for the collective and individual TMN memberships of each local government by category as follows: The number of concurrent memberships in all (84) TMNs observed collectively (Column J, “TMN”); a subset of the number of concurrent memberships specifically within the 31 environmentally-focused TMNs observed (Column K, “ETMN”); the individual memberships in specific, non-environmental TMNs (Columns L – BL, colored in light blue); and the individual memberships in specific environmental TMNs (Columns BM – CQ, colored in green). Coordinates are included for each city to enable use in mapping software, such as ArcGIS, for spatially joining with other city-level datasets. To enable merging with other national-level datasets, we also include ISO 3166 Country Codes at the 2- and 3-digit level.
The networks represented in each category are listed in Table 1 in the Readme file. Figures 1 and 2 in that file and in Acuto and Leffel (2020) [1] visualize the data geographically as graduated symbols representing relative concurrent memberships (Fig. 1) and network ties formed by TMN secretariat-member city connections (Fig 2). Total geographic coverage includes 10,343 cities in 208 countries.
Data from the TMN column is analyzed in Acuto and Leffel (2020),[1] which describes the full global landscape of memberships, and data from the ETMN column is analyzed in Leffel (2022),[2] which shows an association between urban greenhouse gas emissions reductions and concurrent ETMN memberships. A summary of the scholarship and state of the field of city network in environmental governance is provided in the more recent Acuto, Pejic, Mokhles et al. (2023) [3]. See footnotes for full citations.
Please refer to the dataset's ReadMe file for more information on the content, method and application
[1] Acuto, Michele, and Benjamin Leffel. (2021) “Understanding the Global Ecosystem of City Networks.” Urban Studies 58 (9). 1758–74. doi:10.1177/0042098020929261.
[2] Leffel, Benjamin. (2022). “Toward Global Urban Climate Mitigation: Linking National and Polycentric Systems of Environmental Change.” Sociology of Development 8 (1): 111–37. doi:https://doi.org/10.1525/sod.2021.0018.
[3] Acuto, M., Pejic, D., Mokhles, S., Leffel, B. Leffel, B., Gordon, D., Martinez, R., Cortes, S. and Oke, C. (2024) What three decades of city networks tell us about city diplomacy’s potential for climate action. Nature Cities 1, 533, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-024-00101-0
