A spatial network explanation for a hierarchy of urban power laws

Abstract

The presented model provides an explanation to several empirically observed phenomena in spatial economics. By representing the system as a complex network of fixed-size land areas connected by trade between harbored activities, city size and land value distributions are obtained as higher-order patterns. The model predicts the empirically observed spatial distribution of land value density as well as that of urban cluster prices. To connect land value to population, which is a commonly observed quantity, we also demonstrate that there is, for urban clusters, a linear relation between accumulated land value and population.