Power laws, discontinuities and regional city size distributions

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
By: , and 

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Abstract

Urban systems are manifestations of human adaptation to the natural environment. City size distributions are the expression of hierarchical processes acting upon urban systems. In this paper, we test the entire city size distributions for the southeastern and southwestern United States (1990), as well as the size classes in these regions for power law behavior. We interpret the differences in the size of the regional city size distributions as the manifestation of variable growth dynamics dependent upon city size. Size classes in the city size distributions are snapshots of stable states within urban systems in flux.

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Power laws, discontinuities and regional city size distributions
Series title Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
DOI 10.1016/j.jebo.2008.03.011
Volume 68
Issue 1
Year Published 2008
Language English
Publisher Elsevier
Description 8 p.
First page 209
Last page 216
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