An important literature has focused on then rank size rule and the Zipf’s law without delivering significant results. Among the reasons for this low scientific productivity, one can find ommisions and misunderstandings between different scientific fields, the generalization of physical and...

The progress of political and economic integration among European countries is inducing the progressive emergence of a European urban system. National urban systems are restructuring and adapting themselves to this new international and economic context. The location of the largest multinational...

Agent-based models are increasingly used by urban specialists, supplanting the simulation models using differential equations which were more popular earlier. These models already made reference to the theories of self-organisation and to mechanisms of evolution not so far from those used today...

The distribution of urban growth in a system of cities is often adjusted by a stochastic model. We apply this model to the French urban system, for the period of intense urbanisation in the second half of XXth century. We consider as urban units the newly defined ?aires urbaines? which are...

BACCArNi (Brigitte), Pumain (Denise). - Migrations in the French Urban System, 1982-1990 Analysis of inter-urban migration flows has identified remarkable stabilities in both geographical pattern and social composition. More than 2 million migrants moved between the 1 10 main French towns and...