Departures from Gibrat's Law, Discontinuities and City Size Distributions

Ahjond S. Garmestani, Craig R. Allen, Colin M. Gallagher and John D. Mittelstaedt
Additional contact information
Ahjond S. Garmestani: South Carolina Co-operative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Program in Policy Studies, Clemson University, G27 Lehotsky Hall, Clemson, South Carolina 29634, USA, agarmes@clemson.edu
Craig R. Allen: USGS-Nebraska Co-operative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and Program in Policy Studies, University of Nebraska, 423 Hardin Hall, Lincoln, NE 68583-0984, USA, callen3@unl.edu
Colin M. Gallagher: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Clemson University, 0-104 Martin Hall, Clemson, SC 29634-0975, USA, cgallag@clemson.edu
John D. Mittelstaedt: Department of Marketing, Clemson University, 253 Sirrine Hall, Box 341325, Clemson, SC 29634-1325, USA, jmittel@clemson.edu

Urban Studies, 2007, vol. 44, issue 10, 1997-2007

Abstract: Cities are complex, self-organising, evolving systems and the emergent patterns they manifest provide insight into the dynamic processes in urban systems. This article analyses city size distributions, by decade, from the south-eastern region of the US for the years 1860—1990. It determines if the distributions are clustered into size classes and documents changes in the pattern of size classes over time. A statistical hypothesis test was also performed to detect dependence between city size and growth using discrete probability calculations under the assumption of Gibrat's law. The city size distributions for the south-eastern region of the US were discontinuous, with cities clustering into distinct size classes. The analysis also identified departures from Gibrat's law, indicating variable growth rates at different scales.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/00420980701471935 (text/html)

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:sae:urbstu:v:44:y:2007:i:10:p:1997-2007

DOI: 10.1080/00420980701471935

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().