Dresden 2009 – scientific programme
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AGSOE: Arbeitsgruppe Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
AGSOE 8: Traffic Dynamics, Urban and Regional Systems II
AGSOE 8.1: Talk
Tuesday, March 24, 2009, 10:15–10:45, BAR 205
New Laws of City Growth — •Diego Rybski1, Hernan D. Rozenfeld1, Jose S. Andrade Jr.2, Michael Batty3, H. Eugene Stanley4, and Hernan A. Makse1 — 1Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA — 2Departamento de Fisica, Universidade Federal do Ceara, 60451-970 Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil — 3Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK — 4Center for Polymer Studies and Physics Department, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
An important issue in the study of cities is defining a metropolitan area. A commonly employed method of defining a metropolitan area is the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA), based on rules attempting to capture the notion of city as a functional economic region, and is constructed using experience. Here, we introduce a new method to designate metropolitan areas, denoted the "City Clustering Algorithm" (CCA). The CCA is based on spatial distributions of the population at a fine geographic scale, defining a city beyond the scope of its administrative boundaries. We use the CCA to examine Gibrat's law of proportional growth. We find that the mean growth rate of a cluster utilizing the CCA exhibits deviations from Gibrat's law, and that the standard deviation decreases as a power-law with respect to the city size. The CCA allows for the study of the underlying process leading to these deviations. These results have socio-political implications, such as those pertaining to the location of new economic development in cities of varied size.