Cities and highway networks in Europe

Abstract The highway system — a communications network on a national or international scale par excellence — is here examined in light of the relationships which it makes possible between cities (or poles) of European significance. The ‘rank’ of each of these cities, in terms of accessibility to the other poles, can be calculated mathematically and a hierarchy of these cities can thus be established. While the position of a given city within this hierarchy is linked to physical and human geography (natural barriers in the first case; boundary effects, extremely variable density according to country and region in the second), it is also linked to the characterics (especially topological) of the national highway systems.