Fat tailed distributions of the spatial metrics of urban organization of Metro Manila, Philippines

• Main Authors: Perlada, Camille D., Batac, Rene C.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2019
• Subjects: Space industrialization—Philippines—Metro Manila; City planning—Philippines—Metro Manila; Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/11222
• Institution: De La Salle University

We investigate the emergent features of urban spatial organization through a statistical analysis of spatial metrics relating to the distribution of the physical structures in the cities and the nature of their interactions. The spatial characterization, which involves the spatial separation of the buildings and the layout of the roads, is employed on two component cities of Metro Manila, the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Our results show fat-tailed distributions that are statistically different from the normal (Gaussian) distribution with the same mean and variance as the data, which is the expected distribution for a null, memoryless condition. The emergence of scale free regimes, therefore, suggests the inherent memory in the spatial organization of urban forms in self-organized cities.