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 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

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.

China’s development policies and city size distribution: An analysis based on Zipf’s law

Urban Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (12) ◽  
pp. 2818-2834 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Fang ◽  
Peng Li ◽  
Shunfeng Song
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Large City ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
City Development ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Development Policies ◽  
City Size Distribution

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, China’s urban development policies have experienced dramatic changes, from anti-urbanisation before 1978, to anti-large-city-development during 1978–1999 and coordinated urbanisation in 2000–2012. Using city-level data from 1949 to 2012, this paper examines China’s development policies and city size distribution. Evidenced by the Zipf coefficient, we found that China’s city sizes became more evenly distributed before 2000, and this pattern was reversed after 2000. These findings suggest that China’s urban system is strongly affected by its shifting urban development strategies.

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.

scholarly journals HOW DOES CITY SIZE DISTRIBUTION IN RUSSIA CHANGE?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-43
Author(s):  
Anna N. Bufetova
Keyword(s):  
Size Distribution ◽  
Transition Probability ◽  
Urban System ◽  
City Size ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Settlement System ◽  
City Size Distribution ◽  
The City

The abolition of centralized regulation of the economy launched processes changing the settlement system and the structure of the urban system. At the same time, it is the urban settlement system that determines the resource efficiency, and space is one of these resources. In this work, we studied the dynamics of the city-size distribution in Russia in the post-Soviet period and the patterns of cities mobility within the distribution that had induced it. The research method is based on the use of the apparatus of Markov chains, estimation and analysis of transition probability matrices. The results showed a difference, and in some cases the opposite direction, of mobility patterns and dynamics of the city size distribution for the groups of cities located in the western and eastern parts of the country, as well as for groups of cities of different sizes. In general, the identified features of mobility patterns and the dynamics of the city size distribution reflect the trend of population concentration in large cities, the degradation of the urban periphery, the “compression” of the urban system of the eastern part of the country, the decrease in the diversity of the urban system in both western and eastern parts of the country, and the increase in territorial contrasts between their urban systems.

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