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American Economic Review Vol. 101 No. 5 2011

The Area and Population of Cities: New Insights from a Different Perspective on Cities

Hernán D. Rozenfeld1; Diego Rybski2; Xavier Gabaix3; Hernán A. Makse4

1 Stern School of Business, New York University, 44 West Fourth St., Suite 9-190, New York, NY 10012, and Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, NY 10031. · 2 Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, NY 10031, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, 14412 Potsdam, Germany. · 3 Stern School of Business, New York University, 44 West Fourth St., Suite 9-190, New York, NY 10012. · 4 Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, NY 10031.

Abstract

The distribution of city populations has attracted much attention, in part because it constrains models of local growth. However, there is no consensus on the distribution below the very upper tail, because available data need to rely on “legal” rather than “economic” definitions for medium and small cities. To remedy this difficulty, we construct cities “from the bottom up” by clustering populated areas obtained from high-resolution data. We find that Zipf 's law for population holds for cities as small as 5,000 inhabitants in Great Britain and 12,000 inhabitants in the US. We also find a Zipf 's law for areas. JEL: R11, R12, R23

DOI
10.1257/aer.101.5.2205
Volume
101
Issue
5
Pages
2205-2225
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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