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Original Articles

Theory of the distribution of city sizes: Review and prospects

Pages 239-251 | Received 13 Nov 1972, Published online: 03 Feb 2007

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Roberta Capello, Andrea Caragliu & Michiel Gerritse. (2022) Continuous vs. Discrete Urban Ranks: Explaining the Evolution in the Italian Urban Hierarchy over Five Decades. Economic Geography 98:5, pages 438-463.
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Esther González-González & Soledad Nogués. (2016) Regional polycentricity: an indicator framework for assessing cohesion impacts of railway infrastructures. European Planning Studies 24:5, pages 950-973.
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Mark Lorenzen & Kristina Vaarst Andersen. (2009) Centrality and Creativity: Does Richard Florida’s Creative Class Offer New Insights into Urban Hierarchy?. Economic Geography 85:4, pages 363-390.
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Tore Hansen & Inger Marie Stigen. (2007) The Growing Regional Administration: From Federalist Principles to Single-Issue Clubs. Regional & Federal Studies 17:2, pages 235-251.
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C.Cindy Fan. (1999) THE VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL EXPANSIONS OF CHINA'S CITY SYSTEM. Urban Geography 20:6, pages 493-515.
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Michael F. Goodchild & David M. Mark. (1987) The Fractal Nature of Geographic Phenomena. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77:2, pages 265-278.
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George A. Nader. (1984) THE RANK-SIZE MODEL: A NON-LOGARITHMIC CALIBRATION∗ . The Professional Geographer 36:2, pages 221-227.
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W. J. Coffey, L. C. MacLean & M. F. Goodchild. (1982) Randomness and Order in the Topology of Settlement Systems. Economic Geography 58:1, pages 20-28.
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Gregory A. Johnson. (1980) Rank-Size Convexity and System Integration: A View from Archaeology. Economic Geography 56:3, pages 234-247.
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JohnB. Parr. (1976) A class of deviations from rank-size regularity: Three interpretations. Regional Studies 10:3, pages 285-292.
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Edward J. Malecki. (1975) Examining Change In Rank-Size Systems Of Cities∗ . The Professional Geographer 27:1, pages 43-47.
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Articles from other publishers (57)

Bin Wu, Chengshu Yang, Zuoqi Chen, Qiusheng Wu, Siyi Yu, Congxiao Wang, Qiaoxuan Li, Jianping Wu & Bailang Yu. (2022) The Relationship Between Urban 2-D/3-D Landscape Pattern and Nighttime Light Intensity. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing 15, pages 478-489.
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Dariusz Sokołowski & Iwona Jażdżewska. (2021) Zipf's Law for cities: estimation of regression function parameters based on the weight of American urban areas and Polish towns. Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series 53:53, pages 147-156.
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Rafael González-Val. (2020) The Spanish spatial city size distribution. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 48:6, pages 1609-1631.
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Wenhan Feng, Bayi Li, Zebin Chen & Peng Liu. (2021) City size based scaling of the urban internal nodes layout. PLOS ONE 16:4, pages e0250348.
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Simon Stoddart. 2020. Power and Place in Etruria. Power and Place in Etruria.
Pong Lung Lau, Tay T. R. Koo & Cheng-Lung Wu. (2019) Spatial Distribution of Tourism Activities: A Polya Urn Process Model of Rank-Size Distribution. Journal of Travel Research 59:2, pages 231-246.
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Derek Doran & Andrew Fox. (2015) Operationalizing Central Place and Central Flow Theory With Mobile Phone Data. Annals of Data Science 3:1, pages 1-24.
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W. Randall Haas, Cynthia J. Klink, Greg J. Maggard & Mark S. Aldenderfer. (2015) Settlement-Size Scaling among Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems in the New World. PLOS ONE 10:11, pages e0140127.
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John‐Oliver Engler & Stefan Baumgärtner. (2014) Model Choice and Size Distribution: A Bayequentist Approach. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 97:3, pages 978-997.
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Zlatinka I. Dimitrova & Marcel Ausloos. (2015) Primacy analysis in the system of Bulgarian cities. Open Physics 13:1.
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Aurélie Lalanne. (2013) Zipf’s Law and Canadian Urban Growth. Urban Studies 51:8, pages 1725-1740.
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Ricardo Machado Ruiz. (2005) Estruturas urbanas comparadas: Estados Unidos e Brasil. Estudos Econômicos (São Paulo) 35:4, pages 715-737.
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Yuji MurayamaYuji Murayama. 2000. Japanese Urban System. Japanese Urban System 9 33 .
Kenneth Button. 2000. Spatial Economic Science. Spatial Economic Science 30 50 .
X. Gabaix. (1999) Zipf's Law for Cities: An Explanation. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114:3, pages 739-767.
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Shaul Krakover. (2016) Testing the Turning-point Hypothesis in City-size Distribution: The Israeli Situation Re-examined. Urban Studies 35:12, pages 2183-2196.
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Steven E. Falconer & Stephen H. Savage. (2017) Heartlands and Hinterlands: Alternative Trajectories of Early Urbanization in Mesopotamia and the Southern Levant. American Antiquity 60:1, pages 37-58.
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Seoung Hwan Suh. (1991) The optimal size distribution of cities. Journal of Urban Economics 30:2, pages 182-191.
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J. A. Chartres. (1991) City and Towns, Farmers and Economic Change in the Eighteenth Century. Historical Research 64:154, pages 138-155.
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Arthur D. Murphy & Roberta. Hackenberg. (2008) Central Place Theory and Housing Programs in Panama's Secondary CitiesA Case of Official Generative Planning. City & Society 4:2, pages 144-155.
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Barclay G. Jones & Blane D. Lewis. (1990) The four basic properties of rank-size hierarchical distributions: Their characteristics and interrelationships. Papers of the Regional Science Association 68:1, pages 83-95.
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Trudy Ann Cameron. (1990) One-stage structural models to explain city size. Journal of Urban Economics 27:3, pages 294-307.
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Sabir M. Gusein‐Zade. (2010) On Sets of Noninteracting Urban Places and One Model of Curry. Geographical Analysis 22:2, pages 171-176.
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Bernard Lepetit. (1990) Event and structure: the Revolution and the French urban system, 1700–1840. Journal of Historical Geography 16:1, pages 17-37.
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Gershon Alperovich. (1988) A new testing procedure of the rank size distribution. Journal of Urban Economics 23:2, pages 251-259.
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Luis Suarez-Villa. (2016) Metropolitan Evolution, Sectoral Economic Change, and the City Size Distribution. Urban Studies 25:1, pages 1-20.
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. 1987. Models of Urban & Regional Systems in Developing Countries. Models of Urban & Regional Systems in Developing Countries 299 311 .
Atsuyuki Okabe. (1987) A theoretical relationship between the rank-size rule and Clark's law of urban population distribution. Regional Science and Urban Economics 17:2, pages 307-319.
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Yasushi Asami. (2010) Fitting the Rank‐Size Rule to Legal Cities. Geographical Analysis 18:3, pages 243-252.
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L De Cola. (2016) Lognormal Estimates of Macroregional City-Size Distributions, 1950–1970. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 17:12, pages 1637-1652.
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I Thomas. (1985) City-Size Distribution and the Size of Urban Systems. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 17:7, pages 905-913.
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Gershon Alperovich. (1984) The size distribution of cities: On the empirical validity of the rank-size rule. Journal of Urban Economics 16:2, pages 232-239.
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J. D. R. De Raadt. (2011) An application of ashby's law to the skewness of income and output distributions. Systems Research 1:2, pages 127-134.
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M. Sonis & D. Grossman. (1984) Rank-size rule for rural settlements. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 18:6, pages 373-380.
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ROBERT W. PAYNTER. 1983. Archaeological Hammers and Theories. Archaeological Hammers and Theories 233 275 .
Gershon Alperovich. (1982) Capital-labor substitution and city hierarchies. The Annals of Regional Science 16:3, pages 57-63.
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Eric Sheppard. (2016) City Size Distributions and Spatial Economic Change. International Regional Science Review 7:2, pages 127-151.
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Gershon Alperovich. (1982) Scale economies and diseconomies in the determination of city size distribution. Journal of Urban Economics 12:2, pages 202-213.
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Gordon F. Mulligan. (2016) Tinbergen-Type Central Place Systems. International Regional Science Review 7:1, pages 83-91.
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Hubert Beguin. (2006) CITY‐SIZE DISTRIBUTION AND CENTRAL PLACE MODELS: A SUGGESTION*. Journal of Regional Science 22:2, pages 225-239.
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John D. Stephens & Brian P. Holly. (2016) City System Behaviour and Corporate Influence: The Headquarters Location of US Industrial Firms, 1955-75. Urban Studies 18:3, pages 285-300.
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R Bussière & T Stovall. (1981) A City-Size Distribution Model Based on the Weber-Fechner Law of Marginal Effects. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 13:6, pages 689-701.
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Hubert Beguin & Dominique Peeters. (1981) Urbanization in some hierarchical urban models. Regional Science and Urban Economics 11:1, pages 19-37.
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Thomas A. Reiner & John B. Parr. (2016) A Note on the Dimensions of a National Settlement Pattern. Urban Studies 17:2, pages 223-230.
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E J Malecki. (2016) Growth and Change in the Analysis of Rank—Size Distributions: Empirical Findings. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 12:1, pages 41-52.
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G. A. van der KnaapG. A. van der Knaap. 1980. Population Growth and Urban Systems Development. Population Growth and Urban Systems Development 30 69 .
A.M. Warnes & P.W. Daniels. (2016) Spatial aspects of an intrametropolitan central place hierarchy. Progress in Human Geography 3:3, pages 384-406.
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Gordon P. Schaefer. (2006) RETURNS TO SCALE AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN URBAN AREAS IN SASKATCHEWAN*. Journal of Regional Science 18:3, pages 357-369.
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J. Vlachý. (1978) Frequency distributions of scientific performance a bibliography of Lotka's law and related phenomena. Scientometrics 1:1, pages 107-130.
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Gordon P. Schaefer. (2016) The Urban Hierarchy and Urban Area Production Function: A Synthesis. Urban Studies 14:3, pages 315-326.
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John B. Parr, Kenneth G. Denike & G. Mulligan. (2006) CITY‐SIZE MODELS AND THE ECONOMIC BASE: A RECENT CONTROVERSY. Journal of Regional Science 15:1, pages 1-8.
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Keith Ord. 1975. A Modern Course on Statistical Distributions in Scientific Work. A Modern Course on Statistical Distributions in Scientific Work 141 150 .
Harry W. Richardson. (2006) AGGLOMERATION POTENTIAL: A GENERALIZATION OF THE INCOME POTENTIAL CONCEPT*. Journal of Regional Science 14:3, pages 325-336.
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L. S. BOURNE. (2008) Urban systems in Australia and Canada: Comparative notes and research questions. Australian Geographical Studies 12:2, pages 152-172.
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Rafael Gonzzlez-Val. (2017) City Size Distribution and Space. SSRN Electronic Journal.
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Rafael Gonzzlez-Val. (2017) City Size Distribution and Space. SSRN Electronic Journal.
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John-Oliver Engler & Stefan Baumgärtner. (2013) Model Choice and Size Distribution: A Bayequentist Approach. SSRN Electronic Journal.
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