Some functional characteristics of British City Central Areas: an application of allometric principles

Abstract

Thomas R. W. (1975) Some functional characteristics of British City Central Areas: an application of allometric principles. Reg. Studies 9, 369–378. The paper examines the relevance of allometric principles to the understanding of relationships between city size and Central Area size. First some allometric models are formulated in terms of the problems being studied and then the appropriateness of these models is tested at two scales of analysis: first, for the relationship between city size and Central Area size; and second, for relationships between city size and the size of land-use distributions within the Central Area. The results show that an apparently close fit to a linear model at the first scale of analysis disguises significant departures from linear allometry at the lower levels. Throughout the papers factors that might cause the observed departures from the models are discussed.

Keywords:

• Allometric modelling
• City central areas
• Functional structure
• Retail space
• Office space
• Warehouse space
• Industrial space