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

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Author Info
Hernán D. Rozenfeld
Diego Rybski
Xavier Gabaix
Hernán A. Makse

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Abstract

The distribution of the population of cities has attracted a great deal of attention, in part because it sharply constrains models of local growth. However, to this day, there is no consensus on the distribution below the very upper tail, because available data need to rely on the “legal” rather than “economic” definition of cities for medium and small cities. To remedy this difficulty, in this work we construct cities “from the bottom up” by clustering populated areas obtained from high-resolution data. This method allows us to investigate the population and area of cities for urban agglomerations of all sizes. We find that Zipf’s law (a power law with exponent close to 1) for population holds for cities as small as 12,000 inhabitants in the USA and 5,000 inhabitants in Great Britain. In addition the distribution of city areas is also close to a Zipf’s law. We provide a parsimonious model with endogenous city area that is consistent with those findings.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 15409.

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Date of creation: Oct 2009
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15409

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General
D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies
J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
R12 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

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  1. Gabaix, Xavier & Ioannides, Yannis M., 2004. "The evolution of city size distributions," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: J. V. Henderson & J. F. Thisse (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 53, pages 2341-2378 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Ciccone, Antonio & Hall, Robert E, 1996. "Productivity and the Density of Economic Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 54-70, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  3. Donald R. Davis & David E. Weinstein, 2002. "Bones, bombs and break points: The geography of economic activity," Discussion Papers 0102-02, Columbia University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Edward L. Glaeser & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1995. "Economic Growth in a Cross-Section of Cities," NBER Working Papers 5013, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Mark L. J. Wright, 2003. "Urban structure and growth," Discussion Paper / Institute for Empirical Macroeconomics 141, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Glaeser, Edward L, 1998. "Are Cities Dying?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 139-60, Spring. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Michaels, Guy & Rauch, Ferdinand & Redding, Stephen J, 2008. "Urbanization and Structural Transformation," CEPR Discussion Papers 7016, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Glaeser, Edward L & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1992. "Growth in Cities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(6), pages 1126-52, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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    • Edward L. Glaeser & Hedi D. Kallal & Jose A. Scheinkman & Andrei Shleifer, 1991. "Growth in Cities," NBER Working Papers 3787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Tomoya Mori & Koji Nishikimi & Tony E. Smith, 2008. "The Number-Average Size Rule: A New Empirical Relationship Between Industrial Location And City Size," Journal of Regional Science, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(1), pages 165-211. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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