A CAUTIONARY NOTE ON THE USE OF THE ALLOMETRIC FUNCTION TO ESTIMATE URBAN POPULATIONS |
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| Abstract: | Use of the allometric function to estimate the number of inhabitants of urban areas, given knowledge of their land areas obtained through satellite photographs, rests as much on the stability of this function over time as on its goodness of fit to a cross section of cities at a single point in time. Using urban land and population data for four countries, the United States, Japan, Sweden, and Norway, this paper demonstrates that the function is not generally stable but rather has been subject to rapid upward shifts over the past 10 to 20 years. |
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