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The focus of this paper is on the finite or infinite dimensional class of spatially distributed linear systems with Hermitian and sparse state matrices. We show that exponential stability of this class of systems can be inferred in a decentralized and spatially localized manner, which is practically relevant to many real-world applications (e.g., systems with spatially discredited PDE models). Then, we obtain several sufficient conditions that allow us to adjust strength of existing couplings in a network in order to sparsify or grow a network, while ensuring global stability. Our proposed necessary and sufficient stability certificates are independent of the dimension of the entire system. Moreover, they only require localized knowledge about the state matrix of the system, which makes these verifiable conditions desirable for design of robust spatially distributed linear systems against subsystem failure and replacement.