Cities as Spatial Clusters

Ferdinand Rauch

No 656, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper shows that Zipf's Law for cities can emerge as a property of a clustering process. If initially uniformly distributed people chose their location based on a specific gravity equation as found in trade studies, they will form cities that follow Zipf's Law in expected value. This view of cities as spatial agglomerations is supported empirically by the observation that larger cities are surrounded by larger hinterland areas and larger countryside populations.

Keywords: Zipf's Law for cities; distribution of city sizes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-05-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Journal Article: Cities as spatial clusters (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oxf:wpaper:656

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