Zipf's law, the coherence of the urban system and city size distribution: Evidence from Pakistan
Journal article
Arshad, S., Hu, S. and Ashraf, B. (2018). Zipf's law, the coherence of the urban system and city size distribution: Evidence from Pakistan. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. 513, pp. 87-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2018.08.065
Authors | Arshad, S., Hu, S. and Ashraf, B. |
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Abstract | This paper examines the Zipf’s law for the size distribution of Pakistani cities using the five census data from 1951 to 1998. We observe that Zipf’s law does not hold in any of the five census years at national level. Next, we consider the city size distribution of four Pakistani provinces and find that Zipf’s law is more likely to hold for cities at province-level. We attribute these findings to the coherence property of the urban system. In Pakistan the urban systems within provinces are more coherent in terms of common language, common culture and common rules as compared to the urban system as a whole at national-level. |
Year | 2018 |
Journal | Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications |
Journal citation | 513, pp. 87-103 |
Publisher | Elsevier |
ISSN | 0378-4371 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2018.08.065 |
Web address (URL) | http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-85052636699&partnerID=MN8TOARS |
Publication dates | |
Online | 30 Aug 2018 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 18 Aug 2018 |
Deposited | 11 Nov 2022 |
Accepted author manuscript | License File Access Level Open |
Supplemental file | File Access Level Controlled |
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Accepted author manuscript
Sidra_Hu_Ashraf Zipf's law and the coherence property of the urban system-Analysis of Pakistani cities.pdf | ||
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | ||
File access level: Open |
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