An Analysis of the Urban System in Daqahlia Governorate, Egypt (1947-2017)

Fatma saber  Taiema

doi:10.35516/hum.v50i4.5638

Authors

Fatma saber Taiema Department of Geography and Geographic Information Systems, Faculty of Arts, Benha University, Benha, Egypt. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1241-7578

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v50i4.5638

Keywords:

Urban system, urban hierarchy, urban primacy, rank -size rule, first city law.

Abstract

Objectives: The present paper deals with the characteristics of the urban system in the Daqahlia Governorate of Egypt across seventy years (1947-2017), through the analysis of the urban growth, the change in cities' sizes, and the hierarchy of the cities and their spatial distribution.

Methods: A set of statistical measures and GIS software were used to perform the analyses. The measures include: The Rank-size rule, The First City Law (Jefferson), the urban primacy index (UPI), an urban concentration index, and the nearest neighbor as performed in GIS.

Results: The results show that, despite a significant change in the size of cities, the urban system does follow a power-law, with an exponent satisfying the rank–size rule. However, Al-Mansurah-Talkha metropolitan area exhibited a highly stable primacy index throughout the 70-years period. The urban concentration index of Mutlu (1989) was steadily declining, meaning more cities and more competition within the urban system.

Conclusions: Overall, the urban system seems to be mature and stable in terms of both rank-size and primacy. However, many research gaps are still to be filled since it is expected that the city sizes in Daqahlia would witness a re-adjustment process to accommodate the migration to the New Mansoura

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Abd El Aal, A. (2007). The hegemony of the Egyptian Cities.

Abou-Korin, A. (2010). Urban primacy in Egypt: From colonisation to globalisation. In 8th International Architectural Conference, Assuit University, Egypt

‏Alvioli, M. (2020). Administrative boundaries and urban areas in Italy: A perspective from scaling laws. Landscape and urban planning, 204, 103906.‏

Anderson, G., & Ge, Y. (2005). The size distribution of Chinese cities. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 35(6), 756-776.‏

Aragón, J., & Queiroz, V. (2014). The Zipf's law and the effects of free trade: The case of Guatemala. EconomiA, 15(1), 82-99.‏

Arshad, S., Hu, S., & Ashraf, B.(2018). Zipf’s law and city size distribution: A survey of the literature and future research agenda. Physica A, 492, 75-92.‏

Arshad, S., Hu, S., & Ashraf, B. (2019). Zipf’s law, the coherence of the urban system and city size distribution: Evidence from Pakistan, Physica A, 513, 87-103.

Auerbach, F. (1913). Das Gesetz der Bevolkerungskonzentration. Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen, 59, 74-76.

Aurélie, L., & Martin, Z. (2020). From Gibrat’s law to Zipf’s law through cointegration? Economics Letters, 192, 109211.‏

Bailey, N., & Turok, I. (2001). Central Scotland as a polycentric urban region: useful planning concept or chimera? Urban studies, 38(4), 697-715.‏

Bartosiewicz, B., & Marcińczak, S. (2020). Investigating polycentric urban regions: Different measures–Different results. Cities, 105, 102855.‏

Basu, B., & Bandyapadhyay, S. (2009). Zipf’s law and distribution of population in Indian cities. Indian Journal of Physics, 83(11), 1575-1582.‏

Batty, M. (2006). Hierarchy in cities and city systems. In Hierarchy in natural and social sciences (pp. 143-168). Springer, Dordrecht.‏

Benguigui, L., & Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, E. (2007). A dynamic model for city size distribution beyond Zipf's law. Physica A, 384(2), 613-627.‏

Berry, B. (1961). City size distributions and economic development. Economic development and cultural change, 9(4), 573-588.‏

Berry, B., & Okulicz-Kozaryn, A. (2012). The city size distribution debate: Resolution for US urban regions and megalopolitan areas. Cities, 29, 17-23.‏

Bo, S., & Cheng, C. (2021). Political hierarchy and urban primacy: Evidence from China. Journal of Comparative Economics, 49(4), 933-946.

Brezzi, M., & Veneri, P. (2015). Assessing polycentric urban systems in the OECD: Country, regional and metropolitan perspectives. European Planning Studies, 23(6), 1128-1145.‏

Burger, M., & Meijers, E. (2012). Form follows function? Linking morphological and functional polycentricity. Urban studies, 49(5), 1127-1149.‏

Burger, M., Van Der Knaap, B., & Wall, R. (2014). Polycentricity and the multiplexity of urban networks. European Planning Studies, 22(4), 816-840.‏

Burt, J., Barber, G., & Rigby, D. (2009). Elementary statistics for geographers. Guilford Press.‏

Cao, W., Dong, L., Wu, L., & Liu, Y. (2020). Quantifying urban areas with multi-source data based on percolation theory. Remote Sensing of Environment, 241, 111730.‏

CAPMAS (Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics). The population censuses of 1966, 1976, 1986, 1996, 2006.

Carroll, G. (1982). National city-size distributions: what do we know after 67 years of research? Progress in Human Geography, 6(1), 1-43.‏

Ch, R., Martin, D., & Vargas, J., (2021). Measuring the size and growth of cities using nighttime light. Journal of Urban Economics, 125, 103254.

Chen, Y. (2012). The rank-size scaling law and entropy-maximizing principle. Physica A, 391(3), 767-778.‏

Chen, Y. (2016). The evolution of Zipf’s law indicative of city development. Physica A, 443, 555-567.‏

Chen, Y. (2021). Exploring the level of urbanization based on Zipf’s scaling Exponent, Physica A, 566, 125620.‏

Chen, Y., & Zhou, Y. (2004). Multi-fractal measures of city-size distributions based on the three-parameter Zipf model. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 22(4), 793-805.‏

Chen, Y., & Wang, J. (2014). Recursive subdivision of urban space and Zipf’s law. Physica A, 395, 392-404.‏

Clark, P., & Evans, F. C. (1954). Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology, 35(4), 445-453.‏

Department of Statistics. (1952). Population Census of the Kingdom of Egypt 1947. Cairo: Gharbia, Government Press.

Department of Statistics. (1962). Population Census of 1960: Daqahlia Governorate.Cairo: Government Press.

Devadoss, S., & Luckstead, J. (2016). Size distribution of US lower tail cities. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 444, 158-162.‏

Devadoss, S., Luckstead, J., Danforth, D., & Akhundjanov, S. (2016). The power law distribution for lower tail cities in India. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 442, 193-196.‏

Duranton, G. (2006). Some foundations for Zipf's law: Product proliferation and local spillovers. Regional science and urban Economics, 36(4), 542-563.‏

Duranton, G. (2007). Urban evolutions: The fast, the slow, and the still. American Economic Review, 97, 197–221.

Derudder, B., Liu, X., Wang, M., Zhang, W., Wu, K., & Caset, F. (2021). Measuring polycentric urban development: The importance of accurately determining the ‘balance’ between ‘centers’. Cities, 111, 103009.‏

El-Dardiry, D., & El-Ghonaimy, E. (2009). Impact of Conflict between Regional Planning Policy and Cities Strategies upon Cities Urban Situation Case Study: Mansoura City, Egypt, Journal of Engineering Sciences, 37(6), 1551-158

El-Shakhs, S. (1972). Development, primacy, and systems of cities. The Journal of Developing Areas, 7(1), 11-36.‏

ESA (Egyptian Survey Authority). (1989). Topographic map series of Egypt.

Fang, C., & Yu, D. (2017). Urban agglomeration: An evolving concept of an emerging phenomenon. Landscape and Urban Planning, 162, 126–136.

Fang, L., Li, P., & Song, S. (2017a). China’s development policies and city size distribution: An analysis based on Zipf’s law. Urban Studies, 54(12), 2818-2834.‏

Fang, C., Pang, B., & Liu, H. (2017b). Global city size hierarchy: Spatial patterns, regional features, and implications for China. Habitat International, 66, 149-162.‏

Findeisen, S., & Südekum, J. (2008). Industry churning and the evolution of cities: Evidence for Germany. Journal of Urban Economics, 64(2), 326-339.‏

Gabaix, X. (1999a). Zipf's law for cities: an explanation. The Quarterly journal of economics, 114(3), 739-767.‏

Gabaix, X. (1999b). Zipf's Law and the Growth of Cities. American Economic Review, 89(2), 129-132.‏

- ‏Gabaix, X., & Ioannides, Y (2004). Evolution of city size. Handbook of regional and urban economics: cities and geography. Amesterdam: Elsevier.

Gan, L., Li, D., & Song, S. (2006). Is the Zipf law spurious in explaining city-size distributions? Economics Letters, 92(2), 256-262.‏

Gangopadhyay, K., & Basu, B. (2009). City size distributions for India and China. Physica A, 388(13), 2682-2688.‏

General Organization for Physical Planning. (1994). General Master Plan of El-Mansoura and Talkha Cities for 2012. Cairo.

Giesen, K., Zimmermann, A., & Suedekum J. (2010) The size distribution across all cities – Double Pareto lognormal strikes. Journal of Urban Economics, 68, 129–137.

Gray, D. (2021). The size-growth relationship: Exploring the rank order of city populations in mainland Britain. Cities, 112, 103115.‏

Gualandi, S., & Toscani, G. (2019). Size distribution of cities: A kinetic explanation. Physica A, 524, 221-234.‏

Guerin-Pace, F. (1995). Rank-size distribution and the process of urban growth. Urban Studies, 32(3), 551–562.

Hegazy, I., & Helmi, M. (2020). Spatial monitoring of urban growth of Mansoura City, Egypt. International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies, 15(4), 536-542.‏

Henderson, V. (2002). Urban primacy, external costs, and quality of life. Resource and Energy Economics, 24(1-2), 95-106.‏

Ibn Doukmak, I. (1893). Description de l'Égypte. Le Caire: Bibliothèque khédiviale.

Ioannides, Y., & Overman, H. (2003). Zipf’s law for cities: an empirical examination. Regional science and urban economics, 33(2), 127-137.

- ‏Ioannides, Y., & Skouras, S. (2013). US city size distribution: Robustly Pareto, but only in the tail. Journal of Urban Economics, 73(1), 18-29.‏

Jefferson, M. (1939) The law of the primate city, Geographical Review. 29, 226–232

Jiang, B., & Jia, T. (2011). Zipf's law for all the natural cities in the United States: a geospatial perspective. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 25(8), 1269-1281.‏

Jiang, B., Yin, J., & Liu, Q. (2015). Zipf’s law for all the natural cities around the world. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 29(3), 498-522.‏

Krugman, P. (1996a). The Self-Organizing Economy Blackwell Publishers. Cambridge MA.‏

Krugman, P. (1996b). Confronting the mystery of urban hierarchy. Journal of the Japanese and International economies, 10(4), 399-418.‏

Lee, S., & Li, Q. (2013). Uneven landscapes and city size distributions. Journal of Urban Economics, 78, 19-29.‏

Liu, X., Derudder, B., & Wu, K. (2016). Measuring polycentric urban development in China: An intercity transportation network perspective. Regional Studies, 50(8), 1302-1315.‏

Liu, X., & Wang, M. (2016). How polycentric is urban China and why?: A case study of 318 cities. Landscape and urban planning, 151, 10-20.‏

Luckstead, J., & Devadoss, S. (2014a). A comparison of city size distributions for China and India from 1950 to 2010. Economics Letters, 124(2), 290-295.‏

Luckstead, J., & Devadoss, S. (2014b). Do the world’s largest cities follow Zipf’s and Gibrat’s laws?. Economics Letters, 125(2), 182-186.‏

Luckstead, J., & Devadoss, S. (2014c). A nonparametric analysis of the growth process of Indian cities. Economics Letters, 124(3), 516-519.‏

Mansury, Y., & Gulyas, L. (2007). The emergence of Zipf's Law in a system of cities: An agent-based simulation approach. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 31(7), 2438-2460.‏

Meyer, W. (2019). Urban Primacy before Mark Jefferson. Geographical Review, 109(1), 131-145.‏

Möck, M., & Küpper, P. (2020). Polycentricity at its boundaries: consistent or ambiguous?. European Planning Studies, 28(4), 830-849.‏

Modica, M. (2017). The impact of the European Union integration on the city size distribution of the Member States. Habitat International, 70, 103-113.‏

Moomaw, R., & Alwosabi, M. A. (2004). An empirical analysis of competing explanations of urban primacy evidence from Asia and the Americas. The Annals of Regional Science, 38(1), 149-171.‏

Moura, J., & Ribeiro, M. (2006). Zipf law for Brazilian cities. Physica A, 367, 441-448.‏

Mutlu, S. (1989). Urban concentration and primacy revisited: An analysis and some policy conclusions. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 37(3), 611-639.

Muenter, A., & Volgmann, K. (2021). Polycentric regions: Proposals for a new typology and terminology. Urban Studies, 58(4), 677-695.‏

- ‏Nitsch, V. (2003). Does history matter for urban primacy? The case of Vienna. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 33(4), 401-418.‏

Nitsch, V. (2005). Zipf zipped. Journal of Urban Economics, 57(1), 86-100.‏

Nota, F., & Song, S. (2012). Further analysis of the Zipf's law: Does the rank-size rule really exist? Journal of Urban Management, 1(2), 19-31.‏

Peng, G. (2010). Zipf’s law for Chinese cities: Rolling sample regressions. Physica A, 389(18), 3804-3813.‏

Pérez-Campuzano, E., Guzmán-Vargas, L., & Angulo-Brown, F. (2015). Distributions of city sizes in Mexico during the 20th century. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 73, 64-70.‏

Peris, A., Meijers, E., & Van Ham, M. (2021). Information diffusion between Dutch cities: Revisiting Zipf and Pred using a computational social science approach. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 85, 101565.

Ramzi, M. (1994). The Geographical Dictionary of Egypt. Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization.

Rauhut, D. (2017). Polycentricity–one concept or many? European Planning Studies, 25(2), 332-348.‏

Reed, W (2002). On the rank‐size distribution for human settlements. Journal of Regional Science, 42(1), 1-17.‏

Rogerson, P. (2001). Statistical Methods for Geography, London: London.

Rosen K. T., & Resnick, M. (1980). The size distribution of cities: an examination of the Pareto law and primacy. Journal of Urban Economics, 18, 165-186.

Rozenfeld, H., Rybski, D., Gabaix, X., & Makse, H. (2011). The area and population of cities: New insights from a different perspective on cities. American Economic Review, 101(5), 2205-25.‏

Salat, S., & Bourdic, L. (2011). Power laws for energy efficient and resilient cities. Procedia Engineering, 21, 1193-1198.‏

Schmidheiny, K., & Suedekum, J. (2015). The pan-European population distribution across consistently defined functional urban areas. Economics Letters, 133, 10-13.‏

Sheppard, E. (1982). City size distributions and spatial economic change. International Regional Science Review, 7(2), 127-151.

Song, S., & Zhang, K. H. (2002). Urbanisation and City Size Distribution in China. Urban Studies, 39(12), 2317–2327.

Soo, K. (2005). Zipf's Law for cities: a cross-country investigation. Regional science and urban Economics, 35(3), 239-263.‏

Soo, K. (2007). Zipf's Law and urban growth in Malaysia. Urban Studies, 44(1), 1-14.‏

Su, H. (2019). On the city size distribution: a finite mixture interpretation. Journal of Urban Economics, 116, 103216.‏

Statistical Department. (1909). The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907. Cairo: National printing Department.

Sun, T., & Lv, Y. (2020). Employment centers and polycentric spatial development in Chinese cities: A multi-scale analysis. Cities, 99, 102617.‏

Sun, X., Yuan, O., Xu, Z., Yin, Y., Liu, Q., & Wu, L. (2021). Did Zipf's Law hold for Chinese cities and why? Evidence from multi-source data. Land Use Policy, 106, 105460.‏

Survey of Egypt. (1912). Egypt 1/50.000 series. El Mataria sheet.

Survey of Egypt. (1935). Town series, 1/5.000. Mansura and Talkha sheet.

Survey of Egypt. (1951). Properties tax series, 1/10.000. As-Sinbillawayn sheet.

Taubenböck, H., Standfuß, I., Wurm, M., Krehl, A., & Siedentop, S. (2017). Measuring morphological polycentricity-A comparative analysis of urban mass concentrations using remote sensing data. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 64, 42-56.‏

Tousson, O. (1926). La géographie de l'Égypte à l'époque arabe, Tomes 1-3. Le Caire: Société royale de géographie d'Égypte.

Tranos, E., & Ioannides, Y. (2020). ICT and cities revisited. Telematics and Informatics, 55, 101439.‏ UN Population Division. (2019). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. United Nations, New York.

Urzúa, C. (2000). A simple and efficient test for Zipf’s law. Economics letters, 66(3), 257-260.‏

Urzúa, C. (2011). Testing for Zipf’s law: A common pitfall. Economics Letters, 112(3), 254-255.‏

Van Meeteren, M., Poorthuis, A., Derudder, B., & Witlox, F. (2016). Pacifying Babel’s Tower: A scientometric analysis of polycentricity in urban research. Urban Studies, 53(6), 1278-1298.‏

Veneri, P. (2016). City size distribution across the OECD: Does the definition of cities matter?. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 59, 86-94.

Wan, G., Zhu, D., Wang, C., & Zhang, X. (2020). The size distribution of cities in China: Evolution of urban system and deviations from Zipf’s law. Ecological Indicators, 111, 106003.

Wang, M. (2021). Polycentric urban development and urban amenities: Evidence from Chinese cities. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 48(3), 400-416.‏

Wei, J., Zhang, J., Cai, B., Wang, K., Liang, S., & Geng, Y. (2021). Characteristics of carbon dioxide emissions in response to local development: Empirical explanation of Zipf's law in Chinese cities. Science of the Total Environment, 757, 143912. 116- ‏

Wei, J., Zhang, J., Cai, B., Wang, K., Liang, S., & Geng, Y. (2021). Characteristics of carbon dioxide emissions in response to local development: Empirical explanation of Zipf's law in Chinese cities. Science of the Total Environment, 757, 143912.

‏Wiener, L. (1932) L'Egypte et ses Chemins de Fer. Weissenbruch, Bruxelles.

Xu, Q., Huang, T., Chen, J., Wan, Z., Qin, Q. & Song, L. (2021). Port rank-size rule evolution: Case study of Chinese coastal ports. Ocean & Coastal Management, 211, 105803.‏

Zhang, W., & Derudder, B. (2019). How sensitive are measures of polycentricity to the choice of ‘centres’? A methodological and empirical exploration. Urban Studies, 56(16), 3339-3357.‏

Zipf, G. K. (1949). Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort. Addison-Wesley Press