Urban System in Geography

摘要: Geographical ‘urban systems’ order and classify cities according to criteria. There are two central concepts: (a) the rank-size rule, from Zipf, whereby there is a fixed relationship between rank of city its size; this appears work well in self-contained regions, but less so regions with many outside contacts; (b) place theory, Christaller, wherein constant at different levels hierarchy, depending on kinds services they provide their surrounding areas. The commonest, based ‘market principle,’ gives k=3; each level hierarchy has three times number cities, an average size one-third, one above. This consistent rule. General urban-location Losch, extends theory into general system arrayed ‘city-rich’ ‘city-poor’ sectors around first-order metropolis. City systems change over time. Pred showed how interdependencies evolved improvements transport technology nineteenth-century United States. It that, recently, lowest urban have been demoted villages, while ‘global’ appeared top.