Hierarchy Of Cities Research Articles

The rank-size scaling law and entropy-maximizing principle

The rank-size regularity known as Zipf’s law is one of the scaling laws and is frequently observed in the natural living world and social institutions. Many scientists have tried to derive the rank-size scaling relation through entropy-maximizing methods, but they have not been entirely successful. By introducing a pivotal constraint condition, I present here a set of new derivations based on the self-similar hierarchy of cities. First, I derive a pair of exponent laws by postulating local entropy maximizing. From the two exponential laws follows a general hierarchical scaling law, which implies the general form of Zipf’s law. Second, I derive a special hierarchical scaling law with the exponent equal to 1 by postulating global entropy maximizing, and this implies the pure form of Zipf’s law. The rank-size scaling law has proven to be one of the special cases of the hierarchical scaling law, and the derivation suggests a certain scaling range with the first or the last data point as an outlier. The entropy maximization of social systems differs from the notion of entropy increase in thermodynamics. For urban systems, entropy maximizing suggests the greatest equilibrium between equity for parts/individuals and efficiency of the whole.

New forms of territorial governance in metropolitan regions? A Polish–German comparison

The governance of metropolitan affairs emerges as one of the crucial issues in many countries. The academic debate shows a bias towards categories and descriptions based on North American and, to a lesser degree, West European experiences. Based on the results of comparative research on metropolitan regions in Germany and in Poland, we can say that there is much more diversity than convergence in the practice of regional reform in the studied cases. Moreover, the normative and analytical framework of the new regionalism is not as appropriate to describe the Polish and – to a lesser extent – the German metropolitan reality as it is widely assumed. Recently emerging metropolitan arrangements bear the features of novelty, but at the same time most of them still lean strongly on governmental premises. Surprisingly, despite obvious differences between the two countries, some cross-national similarities are noticeable between the metropolises, which share some characteristics such as the position of a front-runner in the national economy or the national exponent in the global city hierarchy. The main difference can be identified in the economic focus of the metropolitan governance arrangements. Whereas this is a dominant approach in German city-regions, in Poland it still remains low on the agenda, at least in practice. Moreover the involvement of non-governmental actors in metropolitan initiatives is much lower in Poland.

Urban Restructuring of Istanbul

After 1980s, the major cities of Turkey have experienced urban transformation process following the changes in the international trade policy and the impact of globalization. Istanbul took the highest amount of share from these transformation processes as being the most important economic, cultural and tourism centre and the most integrated centre to the world economy of the country. This paper describes Istanbul's historical development, investigates demographic profile and spatial distribution of employment and illustrates multi-centre development of the city. Decentralization of population and jobs illustrate the multi-centre development. Multi-centre development contributes to sustainable urban development which provides efficient energy use and prevents pollution. Istanbul having a long history, large population and being in a very strategic location between Asia and Europe greatly effected from globalization which is reflected in its transformation of urban structure and increased land values and thus offered great opportunities for the real estate investors. The role of Istanbul within the world hierarchy of cities is suggested for further research.

URBAN GROWTH IN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION OF INDIA: TESTING THE DIFFERENTIAL URBANISATION MODEL

ABSTRACTRecent research on the differential urbanisation (DU) model has examined the successive stages of concentration and dispersal of population in a set of hierarchy of cities at the national scale in many countries. Delhi, the capital city of India, and its adjoining areas, have experienced dramatic growth in recent years. In order to mitigate the adverse impact of growth, a National Capital Region (NCR) was delineated for co‐ordinating growth related activities within the region. Based on the postulates of the DU model, we explore the urban structural pattern of the NCR over the past three decades. Our empirical findings of the growth of cities and towns within the core and periphery of the NCR support the usefulness of the DU approach in assessing the urban regional development patterns. Urbanisation trends, as observed in the hierarchical restructuring of population would have implications for regional development policies and programmes.

Changes in the Administrative Hierarchy of Cities and Entrepreneurship in Suburban Areas (The Cases of Kielce and Radom)

Abstract The systemic transformation of Poland after 1989 led to an acceleration of restructuring processes both in the national economy and in individual regions. The dynamics of changes was exceptionally high in rural areas. The most rapid changes occurred in areas which are situated within the range of the direct influence of bigger cities. This paper strives to compare the changes in entrepreneurship which took place in the suburban areas of Kielce and Radom during the transformation period, before and after the introduction of the administrative reform in Poland. We sought answers to the following questions: – What differences occur in the dynamics of changes of the entrepreneurship indicator in sub-urban areas in case of two cities of a similar size, of which only Kielce has remained the regional (voivodship) capital? – What differences occur in the dynamics of changes of the entrepreneurship indicator in relation to the distance from the central city? In order to answer the above questions, the entrepreneurship indicators for agriculture, industry and service sectors were calculated for the analysed areas between 1995 and 2005.

‘How Can We Explain Diversity in Metropolitan Governance within a Country?’ Some Reflections on Recent Developments in Germany

In the debate on metropolitan governance, a commonly expressed hypothesis is that the reconstruction of statehood can take metropolitan governance along a variety of paths. This is especially true for Germany, where we can identify a great diversity of organizational forms of cooperation at the level of metropolitan agglomerations. This article addresses the question of how diversity within a country with more or less uniform institutional structures can be explained on the basis of a comparison of three German regions. We examine whether and how such differences can be explained as a combination of structural and other variables. Our starting hypothesis is that case-specific structural variables matter - for example, the position of the core cities of the regions in the international hierarchy of cities, the economic structure of the regions, or the dominance or polarization within the regional party system. Furthermore, the hypothesis will be considered that spatially embedded cooperative actor behaviour and actor-related factors, including political leadership and specific incentive structures or windows of opportunities, also matter. We conclude that such a double reading of the transformation of metropolitan governance is the most appropriate way to understand differences in metropolitan governance arrangements.

Trajectories of North—South City Inter-relations: Johannesburg and Cape Town, 1994—2007

Examining networks of cities in the world rather than ‘world cityness’, the study offers a ‘Southern’ perspective on world city research. It includes places not ordinarily considered. Fourteen years of sample data on cross-border, intercity airline traffic are used as time-series relational information. The data express links between two of South Africa’s principal cities and cities elsewhere in Africa and beyond. The analysis shows persistent and intensifying links, but also sporadic and unstable intercity relations. A gathering concentration on proximate city pairs is apparent. The research also reveals that urban areas commonly regarded as topping the world city hierarchy mix with smaller and less well-known African places in the rankings of connections with Johannesburg and Cape Town. The complex intercity links which constitute urban significance on the world map are not reducible to a subordinate nesting of Third World city ties in a dominant First World matrix.

Transnational Pathways and Politico-economic Power: Globalisation and the Lebanese Civil War

Celebrants of neo-liberal globalisation and their critics ascribe to the rationality of finance capital enormous power. It opens new territories, produces new cultural forms and creates a hierarchy of cities and the spaces within them. How might this image change when viewed from spaces allegedly excluded from capitalist globalisation? For many, Lebanon during its 1975–1990 civil war was such a place. The international financial institutions and their Lebanese allies presented neo-liberal reform as the necessary prerequisite for post-conflict re-integration with rational processes of capitalist globalisation. Through a multi-sited political economy of one financial network operant in wartime Lebanon, I show that the “militia economy” was never outside larger processes of financial globalisation. I argue that it was integrated into a global realm consisting not of financial corporations operating according to a universal capitalist rationality, but rather one of similarly constituted networks of capitalists, companies and other institutions working within and alongside a variety of states in pursuit of politico-economic power.

“Serving Two Masters”—An Interview with School Teacher and Union Organizer Debra Askwith

Debra Askwith is a teacher, union member, and environmental health and safety activist in the public schools of Springfield, Massachusetts. In the following interview, she talks about her experiences organizing around the right to public information as a teacher and a union member. Working with the assistance of lawyers, she has learned to maneuver in the hierarchy of city and school administrators as well as the city's department of education, finding allies and meeting resistance in a variety of places. She has worked on asbestos, mold, indoor air quality, infectious disease, and civil rights to protect all students and workers.

The Process of Urbanisation and Reconfiguration of Spanish and Portuguese Cities

This study opens with concepts and features of new urban developments, current processes and the changing model of the city. It goes on to present the restructuring of territorial and urban systems in the Iberian Peninsula, with the consequent readjustment to city hierarchies and urban strategies. The text then focuses on a review of the characteristics of recent urban expansion based on, in the first place, the bibliography consulted, and in the second place, on field studies and interviews carried out with those responsible for various metropolises, which leads on to a comparative presentation of the pace and state of present day dynamics in Iberian cities.

Integrating world cities into production networks: the case of port cities

AbstractIn this article we analyse the location patterns of firms that provide specialized advanced producer services (APS) to international commodity chains that move through seaports. Such activities can take place in world cities or in port cities. The analysis of APS location patterns in port cities provides a good opportunity to integrate the study of world cities into the framework of Global Production Networks. Based upon our empirical findings, we conclude that while port‐related APS activities predominantly follow the world city hierarchy, a number of port cities stand out because they act as nodes in global commodity flows and as centres of advanced services related to shipping and port activities. Based on these empirical findings we address future avenues of research.

Residents’ Intermarriage behavior in Guangzhou, China in Last 60 Years

The authors attempt to explore residents’ intermarriage behavior and its temporal-spatial pattern in Guangzhou, a southern coastal metropolis in China in last 6 decades. The metropolis has experienced large influx of migrants since the reform and opening to outside world policy was introduced. Questionnaire survey was done in December 2008. Results indicate : a) marriage frequency over distance follows the rule of distance decay ; b) average marriage distance of each decade undergoes wide V-shape trend from 1950s to 2000s ; c) strong sense of city hierarchy in intermarriage ; d) Internet increasingly becomes one of the important agents and shows the longest effective distance compared to other marriage agents ; e) county boundary and provincial boundary are the most important geographical boundaries in mating. Whether the findings demonstrate a common picture of love map of metropolis or just a unique local practice, case studies from other places in China are expected for comparison analysis.

Urban Economics in Thrall to Christaller: A Misguided Search for City Hierarchies in External Urban Relations

Urban Economics in Thrall to Christaller: A Misguided Search for City Hierarchies in External Urban Relations

Global capital control and city hierarchies: an attempt to reposition Vienna in a world city network

This paper is devoted to foreign direct investments (FDIs), which have been allocated on a very low regional level. This makes it possible to first position Vienna within a global city system according to international capital flows and to analyze changes in this position. In addition to being a case study, this paper shall attempt to make a contribution to the conceptualisation of global cities as focal points of FDI-capital flows and the formation of a global city network by firm hierarchies. The dataset is used to analyze Vienna’s FDI-relations to other cities and makes it possible to examine spatial hierarchies based on uneven capital flows. As the data extend over a period of 17 years (from 1989 to 2005), the question can be posed whether geostrategic changes like the fall of the Iron Curtain and Austria becoming a member of the EU have led to new patterns of capital flows. It could be established that there is an ongoing degree of hierarchization within Vienna’s global city network and that the above mentioned changes in the “long decade of the 1990s” established Vienna as a gateway-bridge between the East and the West. On a global scale, however, Vienna’s city status was not raised in the process.

Centrality and Creativity: Does Richard Florida’s Creative Class Offer New Insights into Urban Hierarchy?

To provide new insights into urban hierarchy, this article brings together one of economic geography’s oldest and most well-established notions with one of its newest and most disputed notions: Christäller’s centrality and Florida’s creative class. Using a novel original database, the article compares the distribution of the general population and the creative class across 444 city regions in 8 European countries. It finds that the two groups are both distributed according to the rank-size rule, but exhibit different distinct phases with different slopes. The article argues that the two distributions are different because market thresholds for creative services and jobs are lower than thresholds for less specialized services and jobs. The article hence concludes that centrality exerts a strong influence upon urban hierarchies of creativity and that the study of creative urban city hierarchies yields new insights into the problem of centrality.

Managing change: the comeback of post-socialist cities

The paper explores major trends and patterns of change embedded in the overall process of economic, social and political transformation that profoundly influence the spatial adaptation and repositioning of post-socialist cities. It reflects on important issues such as the efforts to create competitive, socially inclusive and well-governed cities in the post-socialist world. The research draws much-needed attention to an important set of urban policy issues with wide implications for the success of the transition process in the region. It explores the links between the transition to democracy, markets and decentralized governance, and highlights the most salient characteristics of these multilayered processes on the spatial transformation in post-socialist cities. The main argument is that the impact of these processes of urban change has created a mosaic of diverse urban experiences. Despite this diversity, the spatial transformation has several principal dimensions: (1) new spaces of production/consumption reflecting globalization and economic restructuring within the hierarchy of cities; (2) social differentiation in residential spaces associated with growing inequality and the emergence of new forms of urban poverty; and (3) conflicts and selective urban development associated with new models of governance and institutional transformation. The exploration of these ‘transitions’ through the urban lens emphasizes the importance of strategic urban management to address the unique challenges of post-socialist cities and their dynamic realities.

PROCESSES OF METROPOLIZATION IN THE TERRITORY PLANNING DOCTRINE OF THE EU AND LITHUANIA

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the main con- temporaty notions of metropolization in the doctrine of the EU, its development, pluses and minuses and to the consideration of the present processes taking place in this respect in modern- day Lithuania. In the beginning the author widely points to the main terms, such as metropolis, region metropolitan region, and shortly reviews the history of the EU, its territory planning principles. He reveals the early roots of these conceptions found in the works of utopian thinkers – Sir Thomas More, Robert Owen – productively continued in the territory planning blueprints of the19th century accomplished by A. Soria у Mata and E. Howard. An important stage of modern regional planning, paving the way to the later EU steps in this sphere, were wide-scale planning projects of the early decades of the 20th century and especially post-war regional programmes like Great London development. All these achievements of the past in regional planning enabled to arrive at an idea of uniting efforts on a European scale which took place in 1970 and to proclaim the Europe’s Regional Planning Chart seventeen years later. The prominent Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992 finally balanced the interests of the whole Europe and laid down the fundamentals of its “common home”. The regional situation in Lithuania, as in all the new EU member states, is rather multipartite. Its greatest drawback is lack of its own representative in the highest echelon of the Baltic Sea Region urban categories – in the composition of cities officially included into the list of the so-called european Cities. This status provides the most prestigious situation and evident advantages in the international urban network as well as in the intercon- nectional relations and cooperation of the largest metropolies. Eventually the grade of euro City presents as if an important “gate” to the wide field of various beneficial actions overgrowing national borders. The author reports his position towards Lithuania’s abilities “to delegate” its representative to the top of the BSR city hierarchy. According to the arguments given in the paper, an exclusive chance to achieve this international appreciation is through employing a unique and unprecedented situation of the country, namely, existence of the twin cities of Vilnius and Kaunas, similarity of their size and typological feature, their close many-sided cooperation, distinction by intensive oncoming commuting flows and so on. Studies of labour market show that in this spontaneous urban belt a qualitatively new model of “job-residing” location comes into being: to settle in one city and to work in the other one. Together with improving communication between these cities and mounting traffic rate, this process will certainly flourish. By a reasonable regulation and stimulation of these spontaneous processes, a great combined metropolitan unit (“dipolis”) containing Vilnius and Kaunas can be formed. Inexorable processes of globalization definitively stimulate necessity to shake-up local and national economies, to revise essentially inveterate principles of territory planning. Processes taking place globally within the last decades show unceasing trends to join cities, towns and townships network into united polycentral or bipolar systems along the main communication channels. A model of concentrated location of urban units (as the opposite to their geographically dispersed, gradually developed network suggested by W.Christaller) seems to be more rational and advantageous in numerous aspects. Therefore, resuming all these considerations, a new essential question arrises: is the idea of sustainable development formulated in 1987 by Gro Harlem Brundtland the only and undisputed alternative in territorial development? Metropolizacijos procesai ES teritorinio planavimo doktrinoje ir Lietuva Santrauka Peržvelgiama Europos Sąjungos sukūrimo chronologija, jos teritorinio planavimo doktrinos ištakos, pagrindiniai Europos „bendrųjų namų“ pamatus padėjusios Mastrichto sutarties teiginiai. Atskleidžiamos šiuolaikinių globalizacijos procesų stimuliuojamų didelių metropolinių regionų formavimosi procesų priežastys. Pritariama vis dažniau pasigirstančioms abejonėms, ar kelis dešimtmečius vyravusios darniosios plėtros samprata teritorinio planavimo procese yra vienintelė ir nenuginčijama alternatyva. Šiuo požiūriu Baltijos jūros regiono ir nusistovėjusių teritorinių struktūrinių vienetų (NUTS ) kontekste Lietuva stoko ja ryškaus urbanistinio centro, galinčio pretenduoti į oficialiai pripažintų European City rango miestų sąrašą. Vienintelė galimybė tokiam metropoliniam centrui sukurti – tai Lietuvos Respublikos teritorijos bendrajame plane numatytas Vilniaus ir Kauno potencialų sujungimas.

The duality of world cities and firms: comparing networks, hierarchies, and inequalities in the global economy

AbstractMuch of the research on globalization conceives of the global economy as structured by networks among places, while separately organizational research has examined the role of networks among firms in structuring competition, collaboration, and cooperation. In both cases, position and centrality within the network confers certain advantages and disadvantages, the distribution of which defines a hierarchy. In this article, I explore the idea of dual networks of world cities and firms, then use Breiger's approach to define two such networks: one among 313 world cities, another among 100 advanced producer service firms. Comparison of the degree of inequality in the hierarchies implied by these networks suggest that world city hierarchies are steeper than firm hierarchies (that is there is greater inequality among cities). Thus, even under conditions of footloose global capitalism, place still matters: where a producer is located has more impact than who provides support services.

She Said, He Said, and They Said: Claims of Abuse and a Community's Response in Late Medieval Marseille

This article examines two court cases from Marseille's civil court in 1424 and the three competing goals of the people involved. Silona Calverie initiated the suits to dissolve her marriage and reclaim her dowry from her husband, whom she claimed had mismanaged her dowry, usurped her inheritance, beaten and imprisoned her. Johannes Calverie dismissed Silona's claim, saying the court had no jurisdiction over marriage, and he had a right to chastise his wife as he saw fit. Having recently survived a Catalan attack, Silona's witnesses, from her neighborhood and the city's hierarchy, intervened to limit the violence in their midst. Unlike other studies, which have found communities rallying behind abused women and supporting their desire to separate from their husbands, the witnesses in this case did not stand entirely behind Silona's story. The discrepancy between Silona's claims and the witness testimony in her case suggests anxieties about unattached women and maintaining a peaceful neighborhood.

インド，マディヤ・プラデーシュ州における大手洗剤・石鹸メーカーの販売網からみた都市の階層性

インド，マディヤ・プラデーシュ州における大手洗剤・石鹸メーカーの販売網からみた都市の階層性