Q-exponential distribution in urban agglomeration.

Abstract

Usually, the studies of distributions of city populations have been reduced to power laws. In such analyses, a common practice is to consider cities with more than one hundred thousand inhabitants. Here, we argue that the distribution of cities for all ranges of populations can be well described by using a q-exponential distribution. This function, which reproduces the Zipf-Mandelbrot law, is related to the generalized nonextensive statistical mechanics and satisfies an anomalous decay equation.