Historical urban growth in Europe (1300–1800)

This paper analyses the evolution of the European urban system from a long-term perspective (from 1300 to 1800). Using the method recently proposed by Clauset, Shalizi, and Newman, a Pareto-type city size distribution (power law) is rejected from 1300 to 1600. A power law is a plausible model for the city size distribution only in 1700 and 1800, although the log-normal distribution is another plausible alternative model that we cannot reject. Moreover, the random growth of cities is rejected using parametric and non-parametric methods. The results reveal a clear pattern of convergent growth in all the periods.     

中国城市规模分布及原因分析

对中国城市规模分布的帕累托指数进行计算,在选取的27个省区中有4个省区帕累托指数显著大于1。全国各省区帕累托指数的平均值为0.9337,说明中国的城市规模分布比较分散。随后,将全国27个省区按区域分为东部地区、中部地区、西部地区,应用逐步回归方法对各个地区分别进行分析。结果发现,不同的地区,与城市规模分布关系显著的因素并不完全相同。     

The spatial distribution of US cities

In this paper, we consider the distribution of bilateral distances between all pairs of cities to estimate K-densities using the methodology by Duranton and Overman (2005), identifying different spatial patterns. By using data from different definitions of US cities in 2010 (places, urban areas, and core-based statistical areas), we analyse the spatial distribution of cities, finding significant patterns of dispersion depending on the city size and city definition. Our results lend support to a hierarchical system of US cities in which the central cities of each subsystem are far away from each other.     

On systems of cities — An approach to central place theory

This is a research on the optimality of the distribution of the cities by their size. The theory of the hierarchical distribution of cities--or central place theory is reviewed from view-point of intercities commodity flows in this paper. Theoretically, the system of cities is expressed as linear transformation, based on the matrix which represents the efficiency of transportation among the cities. By the model, we can prove that the distribution of cities depend not only on the transportation-network, but also on the differences of per capita-income, or of productivity of each city, and on the demand of rural area and foreign trade of the system. Based on this model, by trying simulation on the various city-systems, it is possible to make clearer the nature of the city system.     

武汉城市圈一体化发展现状与策略研究

本文运用城市首位指数与位序——规模理论,分析武汉城市圈的城市等级规模结构特点,发现武汉城市圈城市首位度很高,中间等级城市数量少,等级规模结构不合理;运用空间相互引力模型测算城市圈内中心城市对周边城市的辐射作用,比较区域间经济联系强度,发现武汉城市圈主要经济联系方向为武汉与东部三个城市及孝感;最后提出了武汉城市圈应从发展副中心城市,以中心城市和相邻城市为依托发展小城镇群和加快城镇化、丰富城市群等级规模等方面着手,更好地推进武汉城市圈一体化有序发展的建议。     

EXTENSIVE AND INTENSIVE GLOBALIZATIONS: EXPLICATING THE LOW CONNECTIVITY PUZZLE OF U.S. CITIES USING A CITY‐DYAD ANALYSIS

This article reports an experiment in world city network analysis focusing on city‐dyads. Results are derived from an unusual principal components analysis of 27,966 city‐dyads across 5 advanced producer service sectors. A 2‐component solution is found that identifies different forms of globalization: extensive and intensive. The latter is characterized by very high component scores and describes the more important city‐dyads focused upon London‐New York (NYLON). The extensive globalization component heavily features London and New York but with each linked to less important cities. U.S. cities score relatively high on the intensive globalization component and we use this finding to explain the low connectivities of U.S. cities in previous studies of the world city network. The two components are tentatively interpreted in world‐systems terms: intensive globalization is the process of core‐making through city‐dyads; extensive globalization is the process of linking core with non‐core through city‐dyads.     

城市规模与产出关系的分形研究——以新疆城市为例

基于新疆19个主要城市1995-2007年的规模和产出时间序列数据,利用具有分形性质的城市规模-产出模型对新疆城市规模与产出的因果关系进行探讨,得出一些主要结论与启示:城市规模-产出关系的分形模型用于新疆城市个体时拟合效果良好,而对于新疆城市体系则相关性不高;新疆城市规模与城市产出一般呈正相关,但城市规模不是城市产出的决定性因素;新疆城市体系在自组织演化过程中没有出现良性发展态势;城市产出效益与城市规模无相关性,但与城市规模等级分布密切相关,可以作为城市体系的系统结构优化的定量判据之一,这从理论上揭示了合理的城市体系结构是决定城市产出能力的重要因素。因此,合理发展大城市,完善新疆城市体系的规模等级结构有利于新疆经济社会的跨越式发展。     

Is Gibrat's law robust when cities interact each other?

Gibrat's law asserts that the growth of a city is independent of its initial size, but the populations of cities display a pattern of systematic agglomeration. This pattern may emerge because some cities are more attractive than others. We analyse the relationship between the growth and size of 1,188 cities in the South Region of Brazil using municipal data between 2000 and 2010. The selected model is the spatial Durbin model (SDM) that controls for temporal and spatial dependence, relevant omitted variables, economic factors, local amenities and externalities. The results indicate that Gibrat's law is not robust when cities interact.     

中国城市人口规模结构的重构(一)

这是一项涉及中国城市的基础研究。 城市人口规模是国内外城市研究使用最多的统计指标。迄今为止,国内的统计出版物和所有的城市研究仍以城市市区的户籍非农业人口和市区户籍总人口作为城市人口规模的指标。但是,这两个指标都已经不能很好地反映城市的实际规模。本文分析五普资料,建议以“市人口”来定义城市人口规模;评价了它的利弊;首次整理提供了2000年全国前100位城市的人口规模。试图通过这些基础工作重构我国城市人口的规模结构。     

Distance,intervening opportunities,city hierarchy and air travel

Summary and Conclusions This study examines the influence of the spatial structure of city locations on air travel by considering the factors of intervening opportunities and the hierarchical system of cities in addition to the simple dimension of distance. The statistical results show that the familiar strength of the gravity model is matched by that of the intervening opportunities model, but only when all cities are analyzed together. The disaggregation of cities by size and region (hierarchy) leads to a spotty performance by both models. The generality of the gravity and intervening opportunities models is thus called into question, and the potency of the hierarchical city organization as a contributing influence determining air traffic flows is demonstrated.     

Understanding Infill: Towards New Policy and Practice for Urban Regeneration in the Established Suburbs of Australia's Cities

A major challenge for urban Australia and its fast growing cities in particular is the provision of an adequate supply of appropriately located, affordable and sustainable housing across a range of dwelling types. A related challenge involves attempts by the metropolitan planning agencies in the capital cities to restrict residential sprawl and deliver more compact cities. Residential infill in the established suburbs has emerged as one of the principal urban planning policies designed to address this dual challenge. Infill targets, typically in the 50–70 per cent range, are now integral to all capital city planning strategies. This article examines the current pattern of infill housing development in Melbourne, Australia's second largest and fastest growing capital city. It highlights the existence of two infill segments—brownfields and greyfields—each with distinctive patterns of development that need to be better understood if urban regeneration is to figure significantly in delivering more liveable and sustainable cities. Current urban policies, programmes and practices are lacking an effective response to redevelopment of the greyfields.     

THE ROLE OF MUNICIPAL‐LEVEL FACTORS IN NEIGHBORHOOD ECONOMIC CHANGE

Despite extensive studies on neighborhood change, the role of municipal‐level factors in neighborhood economic change has been underexplored. This article reviews diverse social science literature and makes theoretical connections between city size and homogeneity of city population and municipal performance, which is accordingly associated with neighborhood economic health. Building on the insights from the literature, this study hypothesizes that neighborhoods stay economically healthier in smaller cities and more homogeneous cities. This study presents a multilevel analysis of neighborhood economic change in 35 U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2000 and finds empirical evidence to support the proposed hypothesis.     

中国城市发展的自组织特征与判据——为什么说所有城市都是自组织的?

城市的发展是一种自组织过程,无论东方城市抑或西方城市概莫例外。自组织是城市演化背后的一只“看不见的手”。城市系统构成可以划分为三种成分:随机成分、可预测成分和受控成分,中央计划和城市规划主要是对控制成分而言。城市或者城市体系是否自组织系统,可以借助三个临界指标进行检测:一是时间尺度的1/f涨落,二是空间尺度的分形结构,三是等级尺度的济夫(Zipf)定律。计算表明,中国的城市化过程、城市体系的空间网络和位序-规模分布分别服从这三个定量判据。由此可以得出结论:中国的城市具有自组织系统的演化特征,这对我们今后的城市规划工作具有重要的指导意义。     

Fuel loads in U.S. Cities

Sources of burnable material within U.S. cities are analyzed. Based on a detailed evaluation of construction practices, storage of burnable contents, building function and layout, and density of buildings in city districts, we derive urban fuel load densities in terms of land use type and geographic location. Residential building fuel loads vary regionally from 123 to 150 kg m^–2; non-residential building classes have loads from 39 to 273 kg m^–2. The results indicate that average U.S. urban area fuel loads range from 14 to 21 kg m^–2.     

WHO BENEFITS FROM NONPROFIT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT? EXAMINING THE REVENUE DISTRIBUTION OF TAX‐EXEMPT DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS AMONG U.S. CITIES

ABSTRACT: Questions surrounding the distribution of benefits have served as the focus for much research on local economic development. While nonprofit community development corporations (CDCs) emerged in the 1960s as one means of redistributing economic development benefits by targeting job training and business growth programs toward the urban poor, CDCs now represent only a portion of all nonprofit economic development organizations (NEDOs) in the United States. Newer forms of these organizations have emerged in recent years, carrying out diverse economic functions. This evolution of the nonprofit economic development subsector raises a critical question: Do nonprofit economic development activities remain concentrated today in poorer cities, or do wealthier cities also have high levels of nonprofit economic development activity? This study aggregates finance data for several types of NEDOs to the city level, for all U.S. cities with population 50,000 and over, in order to examine this question. Multivariate regression is used to estimate the effects of city‐level demographic, institutional, and fiscal explanations on the level of NEDO revenues per capita. The findings demonstrate that revenues from some types of NEDOs, such as CDCs, remain concentrated in higher‐poverty cities. However, wealthier cities have higher concentrations of revenue generated by nonprofit business assistance organizations and nonprofit real estate organizations. This paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for current federal and local policies related to tax‐exempt organizations.     

Are South Africa’s cities too small?

Are South African cities to small? Given the history of South Africa’s spatial development, one might expect that South African cities might be under-sized, and not over-sized as in many other developing countries. It is found that the rank-size distribution explains the sizes of South Africa’s cities but that Zipf’s Law does not hold for the country’s cities. The so-called q-coefficient was found to be equal to −0.75 for the 123 places with population in excess of 100 000. It was also found that urbanisation in South Africa over the past decade seems to have taken the form of the parallel (slow, 1.04%) growth of five large cities. Finally, calculating the “H-measure” for 19 metropolitan areas in South Africa yields an inverse H-measure of 11.3. This suggests a reasonable degree of dispersal, which would only be consistent with optimal city size if transport costs were low and manufacturing not in need of scale economies; two conditions unlikely to apply to South Africa. Finally, the primacy ratio for South Africa’s largest urban agglomeration was found to be 38%. This suggests that the size of the Johannesburg-East Rand urban agglomeration (the primate city) may be relatively too large, whereas more efficient growth may come from larger harbour cities.     

INTERCITY RENT DIFFERENTIALS IN THE U.S. HOUSING MARKET 2000: UNDERSTANDING RENT VARIATIONS AS A SOCIOLOGICAL PHENOMENON

ABSTRACT: This study extends the intercity rent differentials investigation by Gilderbloom and Appelbaum (1988) in relatively independent housing markets to see how it can be replicated using U.S. census data from the year 2000 against the 1970 and 1980 models with the addition of several new variables to measure its impact on intercity rents. We find that region, race, and climate no longer explain rent differentials in 2000 as it did in the 1980 research, while affirming that a large percentage of old houses and small mom‐and‐pop landlords causes rents to fall. We find that both the cost of homeownership and the level of household income remain critical factors in explaining the level of median rent across cities. We also find a strong correlation between cities with extensive anti‐war activity in the late 1960s and same sex households having higher rents, although more research needs to be done before we argue a causal relationship. We contend that sociology needs to be put back into the equation in order to understand how rents vary from city to city. Our explanation of rent variations adds a social dimension that most other researches miss. We also show how the amount of explanatory power is increased significantly by adding in a sociological dimension.     

美国的城市增长管理

美国较早经历了城市无限制增长的危害,因而也较早进行了相应的公共活动并取得了一定的效果,其30年的城市增长管理经验值得借鉴。本文简要介绍了美国城市增长管理的产生背景、概念、法律基础、实施工具,以及由地方到区域的演进过程和有关的争议。     

THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF AMERICAN CENTRAL CITIES

The relative impacts of net migration, annexation and natural increase on central city population change are examined for the 118 largest American central cities. Region, central city age, and population size are also included as exogenous variables in the causal model. Annexation is found to offset some losses due to migration in older cities, but it is natural increase of the population that ensures continued central city growth or reduces the probability of decline.     

ASSESSING QUALITY OF PLACE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF AMSTERDAM AND ROTTERDAM

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the success of Richard Florida in particular, concepts such as the “creative class” and “quality of place” have become growing topics of debate in urban economics and urban geography. Originally developed to assess the competitiveness of U.S. cities, quality of place was applied to a group of European countries. However, analyses of quality of place at the national level can produce only an indicative picture. The objective of this article is therefore to gain a more detailed insight into the meaning and applicability of quality of place in a context different from the one in which Florida developed his ideas. First, it focuses on what quality of place actually entails, how far it can be measured in various contexts, and the main criticisms that can be leveled against Florida's ideas. Second, it draws a comparison between competitiveness and quality of place in the two largest cities in the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and discusses some of the main complications that arise from the analysis.