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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Main Authors: MORI, Tomoya, SMITH, Tony E., HSU, Wen-Tai
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Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
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Online Access: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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spelling 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
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic City size
Fractal structure
Power law
Spatial hierarchy
Growth and Development
Industrial Organization
Regional Economics
spellingShingle 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
description 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.
format text
author MORI, Tomoya
SMITH, Tony E.
HSU, Wen-Tai
author_facet MORI, Tomoya
SMITH, Tony E.
HSU, Wen-Tai
author_sort 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
title_full_unstemmed Common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures
title_sort common power laws for cities and spatial fractal structures
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2020
url 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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