Global city size hierarchy: Spatial patterns, regional features, and implications for China

Abstract

City size hierarchy and distribution are always at the heart of urban studies, as they have a special ability to reveal the rules of city development and urban system spatial layouts. There is however a data deficiency with regard to city size hierarchy and distribution; in particular, an absence of complete statistics and spatial differences from the global perspective. To fill this research gap, this paper investigates global city size hierarchy based on 2014 data of more than 190 countries and regions by using classic models of “rank-size” rule, the fractal theory and the law of the primate city. We analyzed the spatial patterns, regional features, and implications for China from multi-scale and multi-dimension perspectives. The results show that: (1) There is an obvious pyramid structure of global city size distribution, but differences exist among countries and regions with different economic development types, suggesting a feature of “various types with pyramid dominated”; (2) The primate feature of global city size distribution is not very obvious. However, the primacy ratios of developed countries are much higher than others, and significant differences exist among different regions; (3) The global Zipf exponent and Hausdorff dimension are 0.66 and 1.29, respectively. Cities with middle ranks are in the majority, and the monopoly power of large and super cities is effective to a certain extent, indicating a decreasing concentration tendency in the city size distribution and a convergence trend in terms of relative population size, especially with regard to the medium and small cities; (4) The medium and small cities develop swiftly with limited agglomeration effect of large cities, and Chinese cities would significantly influence global urban progress and spatial patterns. Therefore, developing 780–800 cities will be reasonable for China's urbanization efforts by 2030.