Data from: Comparison of social structures within cities of very different sizes

People make a city, making each city as unique as the combination of its inhabitants. However, some cities are similar and some cities are inimitable. We examine the social structure of 10 different cities using Twitter data. Each city is decomposed to its communities. We show that in many cases one city can be thought of as an amalgamation of communities from another city. For example, we find the social network of Manchester is very similar to the social network of a virtual city of the same size, where the virtual city is composed of communities from the Bristol network. However, we cannot create Bristol from Manchester since Bristol contains communities with a social structure that are not present in Manchester. Some cities, such as Leeds, are outliers. That is, Leeds contains a particularly wide range of communities, meaning we cannot build a similar city from communities outside of Leeds. Comparing communities from different cities, and building virtual cities that are comparable to real cities, is a novel approach to understand social networks. This has implications when using social media to inform or advise residents of a city.城市由人缔造，每座城市的独特性皆源于其居民群体的组合特质。然而，部分城市风格相近，另有一些城市则具备不可复制的独特性。本研究依托Twitter数据，对10座不同城市的社会结构展开分析，并将每座城市拆解为若干社群单元。研究表明，在多数情形下，一座城市的社群结构可视为另一座城市社群的融合体。例如，本研究发现，曼彻斯特(Manchester)的社交网络与一座规模相当的虚拟城市高度相似，该虚拟城市的社群均取自布里斯托尔(Bristol)的社交网络。但我们无法借助曼彻斯特的社群构建出布里斯托尔，这是因为布里斯托尔拥有曼彻斯特所不具备的社群社会结构。另有部分城市（如利兹(Leeds)）属于离群样本：利兹的社群覆盖范围极广，因此无法通过外部社群构建出与其相似的虚拟城市。通过对比不同城市的社群单元，并构建与真实城市可比的虚拟城市，本研究为理解社交网络提供了一种全新的研究范式。该研究思路对于利用社交媒体向城市居民传递信息、提供建议的实践具有参考价值。