Self-organization of hierarchical urban and transportation systems

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24760415
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Civil engineering project/Traffic engineering
• Research Institution: Tohoku University (2014); Ehime University (2012-2013)
• Principal Investigator: TAKAYAMA Yuki 東北大学, 工学(系)研究科(研究院), 助教 (90612648)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 空間経済学 / 集積の経済学 / 輸送規模の経済 / 階層原理 / べき乗則

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aims to understand the mechanisms of formation of hierarchical urban and transportation systems. To this end, I extend a new economic geography (NEG) model in order to incorporate scale economies of transportation and interactions between industries, and analytically and numerically show its bifurcation properties. Some of the major findings of this study are 1) hierarchical industrial location patterns emerge as stable equilibria of an NEG model with multiple industries, 2) in an NEG model with sufficiently many locations and a sufficiently large industrial diversity, population distributions that are consistent with a power law for city sizes emerge as stable equilibria.

Free Research Field

工学