Hierarchy, cities size distribution and Zipf's law

F. Semboloni ()

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 2008, vol. 63, issue 3, 295-301

Abstract: We show that a hierarchical cities structure can be generated by a self-organized process which grows with a bottom-up mechanism, and that the resulting distribution is power law. First we analytically prove that the power law distribution satisfies the balance between the offer of the city and the demand of its basin of attraction, and that the exponent in the Zipf's law corresponds to the multiplier linking the population of the central city to the population of its basin of attraction. Moreover, the corresponding hierarchical structure shows a variable spanning factor, and the population of the cities linked to the same city up in the hierarchy is variable as well. Second a stochastic dynamic spatial model is proposed, whose numerical results confirm the analytical findings. In this model, inhabitants minimize the transportation cost, so that the greater the importance of this cost, the more stable is the system in its microscopic aspect. After a comparison with the existent methods for the generation of a power law distribution, conclusions are drawn on the connection of hierarchical structure, and power law distribution, with the functioning of the system of cities. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2008

Keywords: 89.75.Da Systems obeying scaling laws; 89.75.Fb Structures and organization in complex systems; 89.65.Lm Urban planning and construction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00203-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eurphb:v:63:y:2008:i:3:p:295-301

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10051

DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2008-00203-1

Access Statistics for this article

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems is currently edited by P. Hänggi and Angel Rubio

More articles in The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems from Springer, EDP Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().