City size dynamics in urban systems

Denise Pumain (1)

1 GC (UMR_8504) - Géographie-cités

Systems of urban settlements are characterized by their hierarchical organization. The empirical observation of a large set of cities over almost two centuries shows that this hierarchy evolves very slowly, despite the rapid fluctuations in the growth of individual cities. We suggest developing a theory of the evolution of urban systems, which would connect the slow dynamics of their city-size distribution with the more rapid dynamics of the individual cities competing for attracting the populations. Both dynamics are shown to be related to the spatial properties of urban systems.

Mots clés: system of cities; urban hierarchy; urban growth process; France

Domaines: Géographie; Méthodes et statistiques

Denise Pumain. City size dynamics in urban systems. S.E.van der Leeuw and J. Mcglade. Time Process and Structured Transformation in Archaeology, Routledge, pp.97-117, 1997. ⟨halshs-01534934⟩