Metropolitan areas are expected to improve regional integration by facilitating the circulation of people, information, transport services, and economic resources. In practice, however, different flows may not move in the same direction, and the concentration of population and resources in core cities can weaken internal coordination. Taking Guangdong Province as a case, this study examines five metropolitan areas through four types of intercity flow data: transport flow, information flow, population flow, and economic flow. Social network analysis and QAP correlation analysis are used to identify the degree of coordination among flow networks and the relative position of cities within each metropolitan area. The results show that transport, information, and economic flows are strongly associated, whereas population flow is weakly correlated with the other networks. Guangzhou and Shenzhen show strong centrality across all four flow dimensions, while the core-city roles of Zhuhai, Shantou, and Zhanjiang are less stable. These findings suggest that Guangdong's metropolitan development is marked by both network integration and uneven core-periphery relations. The study contributes a compact multi-flow framework for evaluating metropolitan coordination and offers policy implications for improving core-city spillovers, supporting secondary metropolitan areas, and promoting more balanced population mobility.

Zhihang Qiao, Shujuan Wu. Multi-flow Coordination and Core-city Siphoning in Guangdong's Metropolitan Areas. International Journal of Frontiers in Sociology (2026), Vol. 8, Issue 3: 20-26. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJFS.2026.080304.

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