IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v11y1979i4p361-372.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Growth Process for Zipf's and Yule's City-Size Laws

Author

Listed:
  • M F Dacey

    (Department of Geography, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201, USA)

Abstract

The Zipf rank–size law and the Yule probability law are both used to describe city populations. Though these laws are usually treated as identical, they describe city populations in different ways. These differences are first resolved, and the Zipf law is expressed in terms of the Yule law. Then urban growth is formulated by a probabilistic model as a pure birth process that generates city populations asymptotically obeying the Yule probability law. This model has similarities with the derivation by Yule of the law named after him and with the urban-growth model described in a well-known paper by Simon.

Suggested Citation

  • M F Dacey, 1979. "A Growth Process for Zipf's and Yule's City-Size Laws," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 11(4), pages 361-372, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:11:y:1979:i:4:p:361-372
    DOI: 10.1068/a110361
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a110361
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a110361?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:11:y:1979:i:4:p:361-372. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.