Abstract
Scaling laws, when applied to geographical entities, reveal the configuration of the dynamic processes that generate inequalities in dimension. Two interpretations of their application to city systems are discussed here. According to physicists, the exponent value of power laws could differentiate the urban activities that are liable to achieve scale economies, i.e. those with exponent values smaller than one, from those that are merely proportional to the population because they meet universal needs, while others, with exponents greater than one, are seen as being accompanied by increasingly rapid growth and the risk of crises. This cross-sectional interpretation in terms of the longitudinal trajectory of an individual city assumes that the city system is ergodic. Yet this hypothesis is not consistent with an evolutionary theory of urban systems integrating the spatial distribution of labour and the hierarchical diffusion of innovation.
The substance of this chapter was introduced at the Conference Géopoint 2010, 3–4 June, in Avignon. An extended version in French will appear in the Journal Mathématiques et Sciences Humaines.
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Notes
- 1.
In geography, a territory is a contiguous portion of the earth’s surface that has been appropriated by a group, and where this group deploys its own particular rules for organisation and control, and its collective symbolic representations. The notion also applies at individual level, and can then comprise discontinuities and networks.
- 2.
With the development of networks, this organisation into two nested levels has become more complex, but remains a valid description as a first approximation.
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Pumain, D. (2012). Urban Systems Dynamics, Urban Growth and Scaling Laws: The Question of Ergodicity. In: Portugali, J., Meyer, H., Stolk, E., Tan, E. (eds) Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24544-2_6
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