How Should We Measure City Size Theory and Evidence Within and Across Rich and Poor Countries

IMF Working Papers, September 20, 2019

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Holding city population constant, differences in cities across the world are enormous.
Urban giants in poor countries are not large using measures such as land area, interior space or value of output.
Population is the product of land area, structure space per unit land (i.e., heights), and population per unit interior space (i.e., crowding).
The first two (land area and structure space per unit land) are far larger in the cities of developed countries while the latter (population per unit interior space) is larger for the cities of developing countries.
Population is a sufficient statistic to characterize city differences among cities within the same country, not across countries.

Construct a version of the standard urban model (SUM) to study sources of diversity among cities with similar population.
The SUM yields the prediction that the elasticity of city size with respect to income could be similar within both developing countries and developed countries.
Differences in income and urban technology can explain the physical differences between the cities of developed countries and developing countries.

Use a variety of newly merged data sets to test the predictions of the SUM for similarities and differences of cities in developed and developing countries.
The findings suggest that population suffices to characterize city differences within the same country, but not across countries.

Building Heights, Cities, Housing, Measurement, Population, Sprawl, Standard Urban Model, Transportation, Urban Giants, Urban Technology, Urbanization