Large Mining Enterprises and Regional Development: Between the Enclave and Cluster

Over the last century, Chile has experienced a demographic and economic transformation that has shaped its economic geography. This article examines the evolution of the chilean urban system between 1885 and 2002. We estimate changes in the Zipf coefficient and the stability of the hierarchy of urban centers based on information from the Population and Housing Censuses. The results show a marked trend towards the formation of an increasingly asymmetrical system of cities that does not satisfy Zipf's law in the last two decades. At the same time, the hierarchy of cities has tended to be more stable, with a clear dominance of large cities that existed at the end of the nineteenth century and an increasing reduction in the variability among low-ranking cities.