Zipf’s law, the coherence of the urban system and city size distribution: Evidence from Pakistan

2019 ◽  
Vol 513 ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidra Arshad ◽  
Shougeng Hu ◽  
Badar Nadeem Ashraf
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
City Size Distribution

scholarly journals Economic Transition and the Evolution of City-Size Distribution of China’s Urban System

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3287
Author(s):  
Jiejing Wang ◽  
Yanguang Chen
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Economic Transition ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Scaling Exponent ◽  
Urban Hierarchy ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
Zipf Distribution ◽  
City Size Distribution

The evolution of city size distribution in China has gained a great deal of scholarly attention. However, little is known about the effect of economic transition on the reorganization of city size distribution in China. Using an urban hierarchy with cascade structure model, we decompose Zipf’s law into two exponential functions that provide a new way of examining the dynamic processes of urban system evolution. This study aims to investigate the dominating latent forces that affect China’s city size distribution through mathematical modeling of the hierarchical scaling laws based on census data of 1982, 1990, 2000, and 2010. A number of features of China’s city size distribution are found. First, the size distribution of Chinese cities displayed a clear trend of evolving toward the Zipf distribution, which is the result of economic transition from planned to market. Second, the rank-size pattern still deviates slightly from the standard Zipf distribution, as indicated by the narrow scaling range and departure of the scaling exponent from the theoretically expected value. We argue that the top-down state regulation is a critical cause of deviation of China’s city size distribution from Zipf’s law.

A Dynamic Generalization of Zipf's Rank-Size Rule

1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (11) ◽  
pp. 1449-1467 ◽  
Author(s):  
B Roehner ◽  
K E Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Stochastic Model ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Simple Form ◽  
Deterministic Model ◽  
City Size ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
Zero Growth

A dynamic deterministic model of urban growth is proposed, which in its most simple form yields Zipf's law for city-size distribution, and in its general form may account for distributions that deviate strongly from Zipf's law. The qualitative consequences of the model are examined, and a corresponding stochastic model is introduced, which permits, in particular, the study of zero-growth situations.

scholarly journals Does Zipf’s law hold for Polish cities?

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 5-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrzej Cieślik ◽  
Jan Teresiński
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
City Size ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Zipf's Law ◽  
First Approximation ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City ◽  
Equal Population

Abstract In this paper we study Zipf’s law, which postulates that the product of a city’s population and its rank (the number of cities with a larger or equal population) is constant for every city in a given region. We show that the empirical literature indicates that the law may not always hold, although its general form, the rank-size rule, could be a good first approximation of city size distribution. We perform our own empirical analysis of the distribution of the population of Polish cities on the largest possible sample to find that Zipf’s law is rejected for Poland as the city sizes are less evenly distributed than it predicts.

City‐size distribution in the Saudi Arabian Urban system

1996 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibrahim M. Shukri ◽  
Habib M. Alshuwaikhat ◽  
Shaibu Bala Garba
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Saudi Arabian ◽  
City Size ◽  
City Size Distribution

The size distribution of cities in China: Evolution of urban system and deviations from Zipf’s law

2020 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 106003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanghua Wan ◽  
Dongqing Zhu ◽  
Chen Wang ◽  
Xun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Zipf’S Law ◽  
Zipf's Law

City-Size Distributions and the World Urban System in the Twentieth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (9) ◽  
pp. 1161-1174 ◽  
Author(s):  
N Ettlinger ◽  
J C Archer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Population Change ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
Size Distributions ◽  
World War ◽  
Geographical Pattern ◽  
World War 2 ◽  
City Size Distribution

In this paper we trace and interpret changes in the geographical pattern and city-size distribution of the world's largest cities in the twentieth century. Since 1900 the geographical distribution of these cities has become increasingly dispersed; their city-size distribution by rank was nearly linear in 1900 and 1940, and convex in 1980. We interpret the convex distribution which emerged following World War 2 as reflecting an economically integrated but politically and demographically partitioned global urban system. Our interpretation of changes in size distribution of cities emphasizes demographic considerations, largely neglected in previous investigations, including migration and relative rates of population change.

City-Size Distribution and the Size of Urban Systems

1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (7) ◽  
pp. 905-913 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City

This paper is an analysis of the city-size distribution for thirty-five countries of the world in 1975; the purpose is to explain statistically the regularity of the rank-size distribution by the number of cities included in the urban systems. The rank-size parameters have been computed for each country and also for four large urban systems in which several population thresholds have been defined. These thresholds seem to have more influence than the number of cities included in the urban system on the regularity of the distribution.

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