Cities see connections as the way to leverage prosperity
This article from Savannah Now speaks to the topic of economic growth in the state of Georgia. As the state is currently connected, via public transportation, roads and highways, Atlanta, Georgia, the largest of the four main cities within the state, has experienced the largest amount of economic growth in recent years. This state capital, and the surrounding areas, in recent years has been the center for economic growth within the state and other cities, and regions, have been struggling to replicate this success. Politicians, mainly the mayors of Augusta, Macon, and Columbus, have been working to develop a plan to improve this situation. Their discussion has resulted in a plan to develop the transportation between regions rather than focusing on the transportation within regions. In doing so, these cities have increased taxes to fund interstate roadways and intersections to improve travel time.
This model can be thought of as a social graph, with links between areas that have roadways and connections between them. This graph could relate back to our discussion about strong and weak ties within social graphs. The nodes in this scenario would be the regions in Georgia, and the roads would be represented by the edges. The quality of roads and intersections between regions would determine the strength of the edge in question, strong ties correlate with quality roads and connections, and weak ones correlate with. The goal for the government is to create as many strong ties between Augusta and other regions of Georgia as possible, in order to spread the economic wealth into other areas. Nodes that are connected to Augusta through a path of strong ties are more likely to experience economic growth as the transportation between them is improved compared to the regions that are connected to Augusta through a path of weak ties. Similarly, the nodes that are connected to other nodes by strong ties would likely share economic growth and decay. The goal for this project is to increase the number of strong ties within the graph of the state of Georgia, to improve the economic standing of less profitable cities and areas.
http://savannahnow.com/news/2015-09-14/cities-see-connections-way-leverage-prosperity