Research Article
Scaling Behavior of Chinese City Size Distribution
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-02466-5_86, author={Xiaowu Zhu and Aimin Xiong and Liangsheng Li and Maoxin Liu and Xiaosong Chen}, title={Scaling Behavior of Chinese City Size Distribution}, proceedings={Complex Sciences. First International Conference, Complex 2009, Shanghai, China, February 23-25, 2009. Revised Papers, Part 1}, proceedings_a={COMPLEX PART 1}, year={2012}, month={5}, keywords={city size distribution Pareto distribution scaling Zipf’s law}, doi={10.1007/978-3-642-02466-5_86} }- Xiaowu Zhu
Aimin Xiong
Liangsheng Li
Maoxin Liu
Xiaosong Chen
Year: 2012
Scaling Behavior of Chinese City Size Distribution
COMPLEX PART 1
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-02466-5_86
Abstract
We have investigated the population distribution of Chinese cities from 1997 to 2006. The rank-size distributions of Chinese cities deviate from the Pareto distribution. For city size distribution of each year we can find a population threshold that characterizes the boundary of the deviation. The cities with population more than follow the Pareto distribution, while the smaller cities deviate from the Pareto distribution. Using for every year, the rank-size distribution from 1997 to 2006 can be written into a scaling form , where the Pareto exponent () is not equal to the value of Zipf’s law and evolutes with time. According this scaling form, the data of the city size distributions of Chinese cities from 1997 to 2006 can collapses to a single curve, which is the scaling function of the city size distribution.