Primacy analysis of the system of Bulgarian cities

Abstract

We study the primacy in the Bulgarian urban system. Two groups of cities are studied: (i) the whole Bulgaria city system that contains about 250 cities and is studied in the time interval between 2004 and 2011; and (ii) A system of 33 cities, studied over the time interval 1887 till 2010. For these cities the 1946 population was over $10\ 000$ inhabitants. The notion of primacy in the two systems of cities is studied first from the global primacy index of Sheppard [$^1$]. Several (new) additional indices are introduced in order to compensate defects in the Sheppard index. Numerical illustrations are illuminating through the so called "length ratio".