“City size distribution”
zipf’s Law Analysis
Project Type: Provision Analysis for Spatial Arrangement and Population Trends
Research Site: Boston Metropolitan Region
Method: Rank-size distribution of city population, Zipf’s Law
Tool: Arc GIS, Excel
Date: 2017, GSD Towns and Settlements in Metropolitan Regions
#1 The ‘larger cities’ — the ‘principal cities’ — in the CSA are concentrated below the population trend-line and are smaller than predicted by Zipf’s Law, including Boston. This arrangement indicates that these cities may be tenuously integrated with regards to Boston’s centrality, and may operate somewhat independently.
#2 The ‘towns in the middle’ — the ‘suburbs’ — fall above the population line and indicate a relative degree of independence in the system .
#3 The ‘small towns’ –the ‘rural areas’ — exhibit a ‘diving distribution’, suggesting a dis-economy of scale in operation.
Principal Cities: Population(>80,000) — most of the Principal Cities in the CSA were formed long before. Disperse located, not centralized near Boston (the state capital), geographically closed to Boston and well-connected with various transportation options
Middle Towns: This trend has grown since the 1950s and reflects the development of the suburban landscape generally during the period.
Small Towns: population(min. = 5,000) — most of them are geographically remote and lack of transportation and connections to principal cities, some small towns, however, are more proximate to Boston, and relatively good access to both road and rail transportation options.
Findings: Even though physical infrastructures link principal cities in a way that suggests the hierarchy of the system, smaller towns are more functionally interconnected with Boston as measured by certain socioeconomic data. This points to the continued search by principal cities — particularly the legacy industrial cities like Lawrence, Lowell, and Worcester- to find relevance in the metropolitan region and underscores the growth in power of smaller suburban towns in the ‘post-industrial’ regional economy. More generally, the CSA is characterized by a lack of spatial and socioeconomic integration and operates somewhat independently (and increasingly competitive) with respect to large vs. small cities and towns.
