Logistic Population Growth in the World's Largest Cities

Abstract

This article demonstrates that recent population growth in the world's largest cities has conformed to the general parameters of the logistic process. Using data recently provided by the United Nations, logistic population growth for 485 million‐person cities is analyzed at 5‐year intervals during 1950–2010, with the UN projections for 2015 adopted as upper limits. A series of ordinary least‐squares regression models of increasing complexity are estimated on the pooled data. In one class of models, the logarithms of population proportions are specified to be linear in time, which is the standard approach, but in a second class of models those proportions are specified as being quadratic. The most complex models control logistic growth estimates for (i) city‐specific effects (e.g., initial population), (ii) nation‐specific effects (e.g., economic development, age distribution of population), and (iii) global coordinates (for unobserved effects). Moreover, the results are segregated according to each city's membership in four different growth clubs, which was an important finding of previous research.