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This paper compares the size distributions of cities when they are measured using gridded population and nighttime lights (NTLs) data. To do so, we exploit recent and accurate satellite imagery to proxy urban economic activity. Similarly to related studies, our results suggest that population is more equally distributed than lights at the country level. However, and calling assumptions established for urban NTLs into question, our findings do not support a Pareto function for their distribution. We also obtain evidence of a nonlinear and heterogeneous link between population and lights for a global sample of cities. Grounded on our empirical analysis, we develop a simple theoretical framework that relates the difference between the distributions of population and light emissions to the strength of agglomeration economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to verify the hierarchy of towns in Lower Silesia on the basis of population data from the second decade of the 17th century, assuming that a statistically described distribution law applies. The analysis of the city size distribution was based on Gibrat's law and Zipf's rank‐size rule. This made it possible to verify the assumptions made at the outset and to estimate the population of towns of unknown size and designated rank. The research carried out suggests a revision of the estimates, especially for the largest cities in the region, which tend to be underestimated. Studies have also shown that the method can be extremely useful for verifying uncertain and incomplete historical demographic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the prevailing literature in urban economics, conducting research on urban systems at the national scale tends to provide an elegant but reductive approach to the functioning of these systems, assuming, in particular, that city size distributions are continuous. Based on an alternative framework drawing from research in ecology and complex adaptive systems, this article questions this approach by testing the discontinuity hypothesis within regional urban systems in France using two methods and long-term census data (1800–2015). We found that the distribution of city sizes over the 200+ years of population data from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region was discontinuous for every year of data. The distributions consist of groups of similarly sized cities, separated by gaps (discontinuities) where there are no cities at all. The location and number of discontinuities were conservative over time, suggesting that the processes shaping size classes are conservative and largely independent of societal disturbances such as wars. The two methods used to identify discontinuities were highly congruent. Finally, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region is comprised of three former regions, Aquitaine, Limousin and Poitou-Charentes, each of which also had discontinuous city size distributions with conservative structures over time. The study results question the traditional expectations about the growth and development of urban systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution and evolution of city size are critical for town layout optimization. Based on the most recent classification standards and census data for 2010 and 2020, this paper aims to explore China's city size distribution above the prefecture level. Using the rank-size law, Kernel density estimation, Spatial Gini coefficient, and Markov transition matrix, the newest city size distribution characteristics and spatial evolution patterns in China are shown from national and regional viewpoints. Our main findings are as follows: (1) Over the period from 2010 to 2020, China's city size distribution follows the rank-size law but deviates from Zipf's ideal. The distribution of city size is centralized in general. (2) China's city-size hierarchy exhibits a good "olive" structure, with fewer megacities but larger populations. The growth rate of small and medium-sized cities is higher than the number of medium-sized cities. (3) China's cities have grown greatly in size, with more than a third of them expanding. Over the last decade, high-ranking cities have become the primary driver of change. (4) There are disparities in city size between regions. A diminishing trend can be seen in three key economic zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter compares the distribution of urban population and economic activity in the European Union and the United States. Economic activity, proxied with nighttime lights, is more unevenly distributed than population, especially in the European Union. This reflects that more population does not necessarily imply a higher level of economic activity. Both Zipf's law and a Pareto distribution are rejected for aggregate nighttime lights within urban extents. Therefore, alternative specifications are required for the distribution of city sizes in terms of economic activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: We propose a multivariate normality test against skew normal distributions using higher‐order log‐likelihood derivatives, which is asymptotically equivalent to the likelihood ratio but only requires estimation under the null. Numerically, it is the supremum of the univariate skewness coefficient test over all linear combinations of the variables. We can simulate its exact finite sample distribution for any multivariate dimension and sample size. Our Monte Carlo exercises confirm its power advantages over alternative approaches. Finally, we apply it to the joint distribution of US city sizes in two consecutive censuses finding that non‐normality is very clearly seen in their growth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities have specialised in particular urban functions throughout history, with consequential implications for urban and regional patterns of economic and social change. This specialisation takes place within overall national city size distributions and is manifest in different but often similarly variegated residential structures. Here we develop a novel and consistent methodological approach for measuring macro-scale city size and micro-scale residential differentiation using individual digital census records for the period 1881–1901. The use of family names and neighbourhood classification of dominant economic and social roles makes it possible to relate the changing city size distribution in Great Britain to patterns of urban growth and residential differentiation within urban areas. Together, we provide an integrated and consistent methodology that links the classification of all major urban area growth in Great Britain to attendant intra-urban geodemographic changes in urban residential structures. We suggest ways in which this manifests social and economic change across the settlement system for both new and long-established residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban system and its diversity are essential resources for economic development. At the intra-regional level, cities that do not have the status of the regional administrative centre shape the structure and diversity of the urban system. The article presents the results of the study on the distribution of non-capital Russian cities (depending on their size) as well as on the mobility patterns that influence their dynamics in the post-Soviet period. Based on data about the population of the Russian cities in the period 1991 — 2016, the study uses the method for analysing the dynamics of the distribution with the application of Markov chains. The study has demonstrated the predominance of downward mobility of non-capital cities within the city size distribution, which results in their considerable concentration at the left side of the distribution and the decrease in the diversity of city size. Simultaneously, the mobility of cities is more intense in the eastern part of the country, as the mobility patterns contribute to the preservation of greater diversity of city size (compared to the western part). It is possible to identify three groups of non-capital cities that differ in mobility patterns and distribution directions. Th e fir st gro up includ es cities belonging to agglomerations of large regional capitals, whose dynamics of distribution are opposite to the dynamics of the distribution of the totality of non-capital cities. The second group comprises cities belonging to the agglomeration shadow with the most unfavourable dynamics of the distribution. The third group contains remote cities located in the periphery, which show a slight tendency towards the formation of a bimodal distribution. The scale of these groups differs in the eastern and western parts of Russia. The findings complement the results of other studies, expand knowledge about the modern dynamics of regional settlement systems, as well as determine further research areas. The revealed negative trends in the evolution of the city size distribution substantiate the need for a transition to the regulated development of the urban system. Such an approach should consider the consequences of the spatial development policy for different groups of cities and should strive to maintain the diversity of settlement systems.

The widely recognized rank-size law is being questioned as the single best rule for city size distribution by an increasing number of studies. However, these studies suffer from inconsistent findings and some deficiencies, including differing definitions of a city across countries, samples with few countries, less systematic examination of socioeconomic influencing factors and no attention being given to the dynamic changes in best-fit city size distribution types for a given country. With a larger sample of countries and a more comparable and consistent definition of cities, our empirical analysis supports two findings from the existing literature. First, there is no single, universal distribution but rather a plurality of national city sizes. Second, the main body of a country's city size distribution is generally characterized by a lognormal distribution, while the upper tail tends to follow a Pareto distribution. Furthermore, our exploratory analyses reveal that specific city size distributions are associated with nations' socioeconomic development and urbanization levels. Finally, this paper presents the changes in the best-fit city size distribution type of a country across different periods and proposes a hypothesis on the general evolutionary trend. • There is no single universal type of city size distribution at the national level. • Varied distribution types are related to the socioeconomic factors. • Evolutionary nature of the optimal city size distribution of a country • A hypothesis on the general evolutionary trend of city size distribution types [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses census municipal population data for the United States, Italy, and Spain to analyze the statistical properties of their 10-year growth (short-term property). As a result, it was confirmed that the smaller the initial urban population is, the greater the probability that the urban population will decrease and that the probability that the urban population will increase does not depend on the initial urban population. We also observed the statistical properties of long-term growth of urban populations in each country over 100 years. Specifically, we identified the following properties by observing the geometric mean of logarithmically equal sized bins of the oldest urban population in the data used in the analysis. (1) The average urban population increases or decreases exponentially with time. (2) The smaller the initial average urban population, the smaller the exponent, which can be negative in Italy and Spain. (3) When the average urban population is large, exponential growth may stop. We showed that these long-term properties are derived from the short-term property by random sampling simulations from real data.

In order to investigate the evolution patterns of city size in China, nighttime light images were used to analyze city size distribution and its spatiotemporal patterns for 338 prefectural cities from 1993 to 2012 based on total nighttime light index, rank⁃size analysis and Markov transition matrix analysis. Statistical analysis shows that, all provincial regions and economic zones have experienced nighttime light growth, with a growth rate of 257% in the Southwest and 254% in the Northwest. Tibet is the fastest growing provincial region with a growth rate of 842%. The rank ⁃size analysis shows all the other economic zones, except for the Northeast economic zone, become less agglomerated during this period. The Markov transition matrix analysis shows the city size has inertia from 1993 to 2012. Cities in lowest level remain their levels with a probability of 82%. In addition, the size of a city may transit to the neighboring level, but the crossing⁃level transition rarely happens. This study reveals the city size evolution patterns in a multiple spatial scale and a long period, providing evidences to evaluate policies for Chinese urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines two empirical considerations related to the distribution of cities of different sizes in China. First, the evolution of the distribution of Chinese cities of different sizes is examined across 22 provinces from 1995 to 2015. Second, the determinants of technical efficiency of individual regions within the size distribution are analyzed, as well as how regional growth is influenced by changes in human capital, regional city size distribution, foreign direct investment (FDI), and other factors. A panel data analysis is conducted to examine the potential determinants of the technical efficiency level in Chinese provinces for the period 1995 to 2015 and of regional technical efficiency. It is shown that a region's urban concentration affects its effective economic growth; however, FDI should not be the engine of future economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the evolution of the European urban system from a long‐term perspective (from 1300 to 1800). Using the method recently proposed by Clauset, Shalizi, and Newman, a Pareto‐type city size distribution (power law) is rejected from 1300 to 1600. A power law is a plausible model for the city size distribution only in 1700 and 1800, although the log‐normal distribution is another plausible alternative model that we cannot reject. Moreover, the random growth of cities is rejected using parametric and non‐parametric methods. The results reveal a clear pattern of convergent growth in all the periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The present study investigates the rank-size distribution of cities above 10,000 in Turkey for the years 2000 and 2012, and the results are compared with the findings related to 1945 and 1975. The results show that despite the political and economic transformations of the last decade, there is a perfect adjustment of the city size distribution to the rank-size rule at the country level due to existence of a well-established urban system. A regression analysis is employed to reveal the relationships between the slopes of city size distribution and the characteristics of provinces.

Abstract This paper examines the Zipf's law for the size distribution of Pakistani cities using the five census data from 1951 to 1998. We observe that Zipf's law does not hold in any of the five census years at national level. Next, we consider the city size distribution of four Pakistani provinces and find that Zipf's law is more likely to hold for cities at province-level. We attribute these findings to the coherence property of the urban system. In Pakistan the urban systems within provinces are more coherent in terms of common language, common culture and common rules as compared to the urban system as a whole at national-level. Highlights • Zipf's law is examined at national and four provinces-level for Pakistani cities. • City size distribution does not follow Zipf's law at national-level. • City size distribution is more likely to follow Zipf's law at four provinces-level. • Findings are explained based on the coherence property of the urban system. • Urban systems are more coherent in terms of common language, culture and rules at province-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a systematic review of the existing literature on Zipf’s law for city size distribution. Existing empirical evidence suggests that Zipf’s law is not always observable even for the upper-tail cities of a territory. However, the controversy with empirical findings arises due to sample selection biases, methodological weaknesses and data limitations. The hypothesis of Zipf’s law is more likely to be rejected for the entire city size distribution and, in such case, alternative distributions have been suggested. On the contrary, the hypothesis is more likely to be accepted if better empirical methods are employed and cities are properly defined. The debate is still far from to be conclusive. In addition, we identify four emerging areas in Zipf’s law and city size distribution research including the size distribution of lower-tail cities, the size distribution of cities in sub-national regions, the alternative forms of Zipf’s law, and the relationship between Zipf’s law and the coherence property of the urban system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relation between socio-economic and institutional factors and the dynamics of city populations, the hierarchy of city systems and the urbanization. Particular attention is devoted on the integration process that several European Countries, often structurally so different, have experimented from the beginning of ’90s. Results show that the hierarchical structures of Member States is more even than expected. Moreover, the analysis have provided evidence that the integration process of the European Union had a mixed impact on the way in which people gathered across the territory of the EU. In details, the entry into force of the Schengen treaty has promoted a process of agglomeration of the population in the larger cities. On the contrary, the introduction of euro has led people to spread over the territory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is projected to add one billion urban residents by 2050. Yet developing sustainable solutions to tackle the host of challenges posed by rapid urban population growth is stymied by a lack municipality-level population data across the continent. To fill this gap, we intersect volunteered urban settlement data from OpenStreetMap with five synthetic gridded population datasets to estimate the how Africa’s urban population is distributed among over 4750 individual urban settlements across Africa. We assess how urban settlement distributions changed from 2000 to 2015 within and between countries and across moisture zones. To this end, we construct urban settlement Lorenz curves to calculate change in Gini coefficients and test the degree to which Africa’s urban settlements distributions fit power law distributions exhibited by Zipf’s law. Our results reveal that 77%–85% of urban settlements in Africa have fewer than 100 000 people and that at least 50% of Africa’s urban population live in urban settlements with fewer than 1 million residents. Across almost all African countries, the distribution of urban population shifted towards larger cities between 2000 and 2015. However, in arid regions, our results indicate that small- and medium-sized urban settlements are absorbing a greater share of urban population growth compared to large urban settlements. While our urban population estimates vary across gridded population datasets and differ from United Nations estimates, this is the first paper to measure urban population across Africa using a consistent methodology to identify urban settlement populations. Unlike UN urban population data for Africa, our results can readily be incorporated with geolocated environmental, public health, and economic data to support efforts to monitor United Nations Sustainable Development Goals related to urban sustainability, poverty reduction, and food security across Africa’s ever-growing urban settlements.

This study provides new comparative evidence on city size distribution in OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, by using consistently defined functional urban areas (FUAs). FUAs are identified by an algorithm based on population density at grid level and commuting patterns and are thought to better approximate economic agglomerations and their internal spatial organisation. Results show that Zipf's law provides a better description of city size distribution when cities are measured in terms of FUAs rather than using traditional administrative definitions. In addition, Zipf's law describes well city size distribution both at country level and wider spatial scales, that is, by continent and for the whole OECD. Finally, the power law hypothesis – of which Zipf's law is a particular case – was not rejected in most of the countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses four statistical distributions used to describe city size distributions: lognormal, double Pareto lognormal, q-exponential, and log-logistic. We use un-truncated city size data for the US, Spain and Italy from 1900 until 2010, and, in addition, the last available year for the remaining countries of the OECD. We estimate the four functions by maximum likelihood. To check the goodness of the fit we use the Kolmogorov- Smirnov and Cramér-von Mises tests, and compute the Akaike information criterion and Bayesian information criterion. The results show that the distribution which best fits data in most of the cases (86.76%) is the double Pareto lognormal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the size distribution–in economic terms–of the Italian municipalities over the period 2007–2011. Yearly data are rather well fitted by a modified Lavalette law, while Zipf–Mandelbrot–Pareto law seems to fail in this doing. The analysis is performed either at a national as well as at a local (regional and provincial) level. Deviations are discussed as originating in so called king and vice-roy effects. Results confirm that Italy is shared among very different regional realities. The case of Lazio is puzzling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of the new economy on national city size distribution in 102 countries. Results show that the new economy has significant effects on city size distributions and such effects are heterogeneous across countries. Human capital contributes to the polarization of city size distribution in developed countries and service-dominated countries, while it helps to equalize city size distribution in industrial-dominated countries. While innovation promotes an equalized city size distribution in general, globalization promotes polarization and then equalization of city size distribution. Information and communication technology triggers an equalized followed by a polarized city size distribution, and has contributed to an equalized city size distribution in service-dominated countries. It is evident that thriving new economic processes are changing the global urban hierarchy and reshaping national city size distribution. This study facilitates an in-depth understanding of the effects of the new economy on city size distribution, which is of great importance to promote more equitable development and urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

City growth patterns are attracting more attention in urban geography studies. This paper examines how cities develop and grow in the upper tail of size distribution in a large-scale economy based on a theoretical model under new economic geography framework and the empirical evidence from the US. The results show that cities grow in a sequential pattern. Cities with the best economic conditions are the first to grow fastest until they reach a critical size, then their growth rates slow down and the smaller cities farther down in the urban hierarchy become the fastest-growing ones in sequence. This paper also reveals three related features of urban system. First, the city size distribution evolves from low-level balanced to primate and finally high-level balanced pattern in an inverted U-shaped path. Second, there exist persistent discontinuities, or gaps, between city size classes. Third, city size in the upper tail exhibits conditional convergence characteristics. This paper could not only contribute to enhancing the understanding of urbanization process and city size distribution dynamics, but also be widely used in making effective policies and scientific urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian & Latin American Economic History is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlights: [•] We examine the discontinuities in the evolution of cities in Texas, USA from 1850 to 2010. [•] The growth of Texas cities exhibits four stages based on qualitative and quantitative analyses. [•] Discontinuities occur mainly at the upper and lower tails of the city size distributions. [•] Medium size cities are more continuous. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This  article analyses the performance of the graphs traditionally used to study size distributions: histograms, Zipf plots (double logarithmic graphs of rank compared to size) and plotted cumulative density functions. A lognormal distribution is fitted to urban data from three countries (the United States, Spain and Italy) over all of the twentieth century. We explain the advantages and disadvantages associated with these graphic methods and derive some statistical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is largely accepted among geographers and economists that the City Size Distribution (CSD) is well described by a power law, i.e., Zipf's law. This opinion is shared by this community in a manner it could be treated as a paradigm. In reality, however, Zipf's law is not always observed (even as an approximation), and we prefer to adopt a classification of the CSD into three classes. In this work, we present the characteristics of these classes and give some examples for them. We use the Israeli system of cities as an interesting case study in which the same ensemble of cities passes from one class to another. We relate this change to the urbanization process that occurred in Israel from the 1960s onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on city planning-related topics, including visions of waterfront development in postindustrial Philadelphia, the construction of a town planning perception of Colombo, and city planning and the U.S. census.

Abstract: We present an application of a growth model for a system of cities. This computer model simulates the evolution of systems with measurable entities (e.g. city size), and takes into account the growth of the entities in terms of size and number. It includes a random multiplicative process for the growth of individual entities and for the creation of new ones. We use a new mathematical expression with a positive exponent (which we call the ‘shape exponent’) and additional three parameters, to describe the dynamics of the systems’ size distributions through time. We compare the changes of a real system of cities and the model’s results quantitatively and qualitatively. Our findings suggest that there is a good agreement at the macro level between the model and the real data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents abstracts on land use planning topics, including "Historical Amnesia: New Urbanism and the City of Tomorrow," "More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt's Contributions to Planning Knowledge" and "Methodology for the Survival Analysis of Urban Building Stocks."

This section presents abstracts of papers on city planning published from 2007 to 2008, including "Streets, Sounds and Identity in Inter-war Harlem," by Clare Corbould, "(Re)making the Other, Heterosexualising Everyday Space," by Kath Browne, and "Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds," by Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder.

Abstract: This work proposes a new approach to analyze the city size distribution (CSD). We present a general equation for the rank size logarithmic plot, with a new positive exponent α. When α =1, the Pareto distribution is yielded; when α ≠1, the log of the curves exhibits a concave distribution. We studied the CSDs of 41 cases in 35 countries (in several countries we examined cities and metropolitan areas or agglomerations) in order to apply our new equation. We determined accurately the exponent α for 31 cases. In 18 cases we received α =1, in one case α <1, and in 12 cases α >1. However, for the other cases, either the distributions were not homogeneous, or the data exhibited significant fluctuations which precluded a good determination of the exponent α. Based on this analysis, we developed a series of models (based on the models of town growth of Gabaix and of Blank and Solomon) in order to describe the different CSDs. The results of these models include power laws as well as cases that are represented by concave distributions on a logarithmic plot of the rank size. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Presents abstracts of several studies on city planning. "Designing and Living in a New Industrial Suburb: Experiences in the Cannock Chase Coalfield From the 1950s to the 1970s," by Gareth Evans and Peter J. Larkham; "Learning to Shop in Zion: The Consumer Revolution in Great Basin Mormon Culture,1847-1910," by Greg Umbach; "Curing Congestion: Competing Plans for a Loop Highway and Parking Regulations in Boston in the 1920s," by Asha Weinstein.

Presents several abstracts of studies concerning land use planning. "North American Urban History: The Everyday Politics and Spatial Logics of Metropolitan Life," by Mary Corbin Sies; "The Myth of Liberty Place: Race and Public Memory in New Orleans," by Jacob A. Wagner; "Planned Industrial Districts in Chicago: Firms, Networks, and Boundaries," by Robert Lewis.