Size-distribution analysis in the study of urban systems: Evidence from Greece

Abstract

This paper examines empirically the utility of size-distribution analysis in the study of urban systems, on data referring to every urban settlement recorded in 2011 national census of Greece. The study lowers the scale of the size-distribution analysis to the regional, instead of the national level, where is commonly being applied, examining two aspects of size-distributions, the rank-size and the city-size-distribution, in comparison with three well-established statistical dispersion indices, the coefficient of variation, the Theil index and the Gini coefficient. The major research question is to detect how capable are the size-distribution exponents to operate as measures of statistical dispersion and to include socioeconomic information. Overall, the analysis concludes that the size-distribution assessment is useful for the initialisation of the study of urban systems, where the available information is restricted to population size, and is capable to provide structural information of an urban system and its socioeconomic framework, but not more effective than other measures of statistical dispersion. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.