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
AuthorsArshad, S., Hu, S. and Ashraf, B.
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.

Year2018
JournalPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
Journal citation513, pp. 87-103
PublisherElsevier
ISSN0378-4371
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
Online30 Aug 2018
Publication process dates
Accepted18 Aug 2018
Deposited11 Nov 2022
Accepted author manuscript
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