Emergence of Swiss metropole and scaling properties of urban clusters

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Version: author
Serval ID
serval:BIB_D9391E8800D8
Type
Inproceedings: an article in a conference proceedings.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Emergence of Swiss metropole and scaling properties of urban clusters
Title of the conference
S4 International Conference on Emergence in Geographical Space, 23-25 November
Author(s)
Kaiser Christian, Kanevski Mikhail, Da Cunha Antonio, Timonin Vadim
Address
Paris
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2009
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Language
english
Abstract
Defining the limits of an urban agglomeration is essential both for fundamental and applied studies in quantitative and theoretical geography. A simple and consistent way for defining such urban clusters is important for performing different statistical analysis and comparisons. Traditionally, agglomerations are defined using a rather qualitative approach based on various statistical measures. This definition varies generally from one country to another, and the data taken into account are different. In this paper, we explore the use of the City Clustering Algorithm (CCA) for the agglomeration definition in Switzerland. This algorithm provides a systemic and easy way to define an urban area based only on population data. The CCA allows the specification of the spatial resolution for defining the urban clusters. The results from different resolutions are compared and analysed, and the effect of filtering the data investigated. Different scales and parameters allow highlighting different phenomena. The study of Zipf's law using the visual rank-size rule shows that it is valid only for some specific urban clusters, inside a narrow range of the spatial resolution of the CCA. The scale where emergence of one main cluster occurs can also be found in the analysis using Zipf's law. The study of the urban clusters at different scales using the lacunarity measure - a complementary measure to the fractal dimension - allows to highlight the change of scale at a given range.
Keywords
Scale laws, Urban geography, Percolation theory, Clusters, ClusterVille
Create date
01/08/2010 12:30
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:58
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