The concept of the city size distribution is criticized for its lack of consideration of the effects of interurban interdependencies on the growth of cities. Theoretical justifications for the rank-size relationship have the same shortcomings, and an empirical study reveals that there is little correlation between deviations from rank-size distributions and national economic and social characteristics. Thus arguments suggesting a close correspondence between city size distributions and the level of development of a country, irrespective of intranational variations in city location and socioeconomic characteristics, seem to have little foundation.
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