The Size Distribution of ALL Chinese Cities: 2000 – 2010

Assistant professor at the Department of Real Estate, National University of Singapore.

Qiang Li's personal website

We characterize the size distribution of all Chinese "cities" using land cover and nighttime light satellite images. All human settlements, including metropolises, cities, towns, and villages, are constructed from the satellite data. We then test whether the cities follow the Pareto, lognormal, or other distributions. Our preliminary results favor the lognormal distribution against the Pareto. With the new definition of cities, we can also characterize in much finer details the evolution of ALL cities from 2000 to 2010.