La métropolisation à l’aune de la ‘loi’ taille/rang : Le cas Canadien, 1971–2001

Metropolization and the rank/size ’law‘: the Canadian case, 1971–2001 There is currently considerable interest in the process of metropolization. One of the consequences of this process, observed by numerous researchers, is the slower growth and even decline of small and medium cities. From a theoretical point of view, this process is compatible with endogenous growth theory: metropolitan areas offer economic actors certain key factors (access to information, to global networks, etc.) that smaller cities cannot. Concurrently, however, there is a resurgence of interest in Zipf's law and, more generally, in the stability of urban hierarchies. These two bodies of work appear to be in contradiction. However, using Canadian data from 1971 to 2001, we show that whilst metropolization is indeed occurring, this is not necessarily incompatible with a regular urban hierarchy. Indeed, if it is assumed that Zipf's rank‐size rule applies to urban systems in stable socio‐economic contexts, and that this regularity can be disrupted by fundamental social and economic changes, then the current wave of metropolization can be interpreted as a re‐ordering of cities in the face of the major social and economic changes of the 1980s and 1990s, which may eventually lead to a new equilibrium compatible with Zipf's law.     

基于齐夫法则的江苏省旅游收入规模结构变化研究

借用齐夫法则研究了江苏省近10年的旅游收入规模结构变化,并与差异度变化加以对比。结果显示无论是国内旅游收入还是国际旅游收入,规模分布均基本遵循齐夫定律,与差异度变化趋势也相一致;无标度区范围均呈扩大趋势,规模结构逐步得到优化。但两者也有不同点:(1)前者从局部单分形演变为几乎覆盖全域的单分形,而后者则从局部单分形→几乎覆盖全域的单分形→局部单分形→双分形;(2)前者是先呈帕雷托模式后呈不规则的帕雷托模式,而后者则是前几年呈不规则的帕雷托模式,后几年标度区一呈对数正态分布模式,标度区二呈不规则的帕雷托模式;(3)前者的规模变差是先扩大后缩小,而后者则是前几年规模变差略有波动,后几年两个标度区之间的差距稍有扩大,但各标度区内部的规模变差却呈缩小趋势。齐夫法则可为分析旅游收入规模结构变化提供新的定量方法。     

A theoretical framework for evolutionary economic geography: industrial dynamics and urban growth as a branching process

We propose a framework that specifies the process of economicdevelopment as an evolutionary branching process of productinnovations. Each product innovation provides a growth opportunityfor an existing firm or a new firm, and for an existing cityor a new city. One can then obtain both firm size and city sizedistributions as two aggregates resulting from a single evolutionaryprocess. Gains from variety at the firm level (economies ofscope) and the urban level (Jacobs externalities) provide thecentral feedback mechanism in economic development generatingstrong path dependencies in the spatial concentration of industriesand the specialization of cities. Gains from size are also expected,yet these are ultimately bounded by increasing wages. The contributionof our framework lies in providing a micro-foundation of economicgeography in terms of the interplay between industrial dynamicsand urban growth. The framework is sufficiently general to investigatesystematically a number of stylized facts in economic geography,while at the same time it is sufficiently flexible to be extendedsuch as to become applicable in more specific micro-contexts.A number of extensions related to the concepts of knowledgespillover and lock-in, are also discussed.