Economic development, urban cycles, and social dynamics: discriminating polycentric from mono-centric structures with the rank-size rule

Bogdana Nosova and Luca Salvati ()
Additional contact information
Bogdana Nosova: Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Luca Salvati: Sapienza University of Rome

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 2025, vol. 59, issue 5, No 3, 3959-3975

Abstract: Abstract The present study reconnects the hegemonic concept of polycentric development with an operational approach investigating metropolitan hierarchies with the rank-size rule, assuming City Life Cycle theory as the reference framework. Likely for the first time in the literature, we applied the Zipf's law to the urban–rural gradient of built-up land parcel’s areas within a European metropolitan region (Athens, Greece) along a building cycle from urbanization to re-urbanization (1948–2018). The fit of Zipf’s law to real data was verified using a linear regression model that incorporates relevant predictors of land parcel’s size. We assumed a slope coefficient for parcel’s rank close to one as an indicator of mono-centrism; a slope lower than one delineates a relaxation of the settlement hierarchy possibly reflective of polycentric development. The rank-size rule applied to land parcel’s size was verified separately for all observation years, resulting more significant in remote times (1948 and 1975) and less significant in recent times (1990, 2000, 2006, 2012, 2018). Slope coefficients were found systematically lower than 1, declining slightly over time. These results suggest a latent shift from a traditionally mono-centric structure (1948) to moderately polycentric settlements (2018). We identified fractal dimension and the distance from neighboring built-up parcels and the main urban nodes, as the predictors most significantly associated with land parcel’s size. Contributing to the classification of mono-centric and polycentric models, our approach identifies—through simplified analytical tools—the main economic and non-economic factors shaping long-term expansion of contemporary cities in Europe.

Keywords: Metropolitan gradient; Agglomeration economies; Social dynamics; Indicators; European cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11135-025-02154-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:qualqt:v:59:y:2025:i:5:d:10.1007_s11135-025-02154-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11135-025-02154-2

Access Statistics for this article

Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology is currently edited by Vittorio Capecchi

More articles in Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().