Numerous studies have proposed cooling measures to mitigate surface urban heat island (SUHI) effect from the perspective of landscape pattern. However, rare studies have considered to alleviate the SUHI from a network perspective, which was demonstrated by first building a SUHI network to identify the key nodes and links of a SUHI network and subsequently breaking this network to effectively mitigate SUHI. Here, a new approach to build SUHI network is proposed, which integrates morphological spatial pattern analysis and circuit theory. It includes: i) identification of stable and high-risk SUHI patches, ii) extraction of the “core” type, iii) evaluation of “core” importance, iv) construction of a friction map, and v) generation of links and pinch-points. Dongguan city was selected as case and the results showed: 1) 42 links were identified with 31 pinch points located in these links; 2) Most of these links and pinch-points were distributed in the southwestern and northwestern regions; 3) Cooling measures (patch-based) should be implemented in these specific areas to avoid connections between the links and nodes that could seriously aggravate the thermal environment of entire region. The method and reverse thinking process adopted could provide new insights for climate adaption planning and urban sustainability.