Abstract
The study of the evolution of an urban system raises a number of practical questions, as to the operational definition of the components of the system as well as to the incorporation of the factor time in the analysis. In this chapter the focuss is on the urban centres, the nodes of the urban system. One of the first problems to be solved now is the definition of such a node. It has been argued above that population size can be used as an approximation of the complexity of the spatial economic structure of a region. The acceptation of this notion makes it possible to study the urban system as a population system. The analysis of the population system over the study period will be pursued from this perspective.
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van der Knaap, G.A. (1980). Urban Population Distributions, Growth and Change, 1840–1970. In: Population Growth and Urban Systems Development. Studies in Applied Regional Science, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8742-5_2
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