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Today, cities account for the majority of global energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The interaction between cities is critical for regional low-carbon development. At this time, China has turned to the full opening of the carbon trading market as an important policy tool for achieving its ambitious emission reduction goals. This paper attempts to explore the spatial relationships among cities from the perspective of carbon trading. A "multiscenarios across different spatial scales" analysis framework applied to the allocation and trading of CO2 emission quotas among cities in China is proposed. Based on this framework, the carbon trading networks of 182 cities in China are specifically simulated under four different scenarios, with a comparative analysis of the networks' complexity made from different perspectives. The results of the study are as follows: firstly, significant spatial network correlations exist between the cities' carbon trading under each scenario. Secondly, on a national scale, there are more inner connections in carbon trading networks, with stronger correlations and robustness, while the degree of connection of intercity carbon trading is higher overall on a regional scale. Thirdly, on a national scale, no obvious core nodes exist in the network, while core nodes do exist in the overall network and in each region under the regional scale. Fourthly, cities in the central region have the highest core position overall. Finally, based on the research results, practical guidance in using the framework for achieving carbon reduction, promoting economic growth, and balancing regional development, as well as the important inspiration for policy formulation, is further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With their focus on human production and consumption activities, cities incur massive energy consumption and CO2 emissions. An intercity connection is a typical complex system in which the interaction between cities is crucial for developing low-carbon outputs within the urban agglomeration. This paper presents the construction of the CO2 emission network of an urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River middle reaches megalopolis, based on the gravity model. Combined with social network analysis (SNA), a multilevel analysis framework is proposed to deal with the complexity, spatiality, and visualization of the CO2 emission network with reference to the network features, structural equivalence, and the rich-club phenomenon. The following results emerged: firstly, the spatial structure of the CO2 emissions was characterized by low robustness and compactness, indicating disunity among the studied cities. Secondly, there was found to be a strong correlation between regionalism and intercity connections, with geographically close cities playing a similar role in the network. Thirdly, the "rich-club" cities, including Wuhan, Changsha, Xiaogan, and Zhuzhou, dominated the connections, covering more than 87.1% of the network in the Yangtze River Middle Reaches Megalopolis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]