Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures
City-size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across a wide range of countries. But such distributions are also meaningful at other spatial scales, such as within certain regions of a country. Using data from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States, we f...
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sg-smu-ink.soe_research-33712021-05-31T04:21:28Z Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures MORI, Tomoya SMITH, Tony E. HSU, Wen-Tai City-size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across a wide range of countries. But such distributions are also meaningful at other spatial scales, such as within certain regions of a country. Using data from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States, we first document that large cities are significantly more spaced out than would be expected by chance alone. We next construct spatial hierarchies for countries by first partitioning geographic space using a given number of their largest cities as cell centers and then continuing this partitioning procedure within each cell recursively. We find that city-size distributions in different parts of these spatial hierarchies exhibit power laws that are, again, far more similar than would be expected by chance alone—suggesting the existence of a spatial fractal structure. 2020-03-01T08:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2372 info:doi/10.1073/pnas.1913014117 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3371/viewcontent/common_power__PV.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School Of Economics eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University City size Fractal structure Power law Spatial hierarchy Growth and Development Industrial Organization Regional Economics |
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City size Fractal structure Power law Spatial hierarchy Growth and Development Industrial Organization Regional Economics MORI, Tomoya SMITH, Tony E. HSU, Wen-Tai Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
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City-size distributions are known to be well approximated by power laws across a wide range of countries. But such distributions are also meaningful at other spatial scales, such as within certain regions of a country. Using data from China, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States, we first document that large cities are significantly more spaced out than would be expected by chance alone. We next construct spatial hierarchies for countries by first partitioning geographic space using a given number of their largest cities as cell centers and then continuing this partitioning procedure within each cell recursively. We find that city-size distributions in different parts of these spatial hierarchies exhibit power laws that are, again, far more similar than would be expected by chance alone—suggesting the existence of a spatial fractal structure. |
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MORI, Tomoya SMITH, Tony E. HSU, Wen-Tai |
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MORI, Tomoya SMITH, Tony E. HSU, Wen-Tai |
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MORI, Tomoya |
title |
Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
title_short |
Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
title_full |
Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
title_fullStr |
Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
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Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
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common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures |
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Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University |
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2020 |
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https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2372 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3371/viewcontent/common_power__PV.pdf |
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