An Approach to Urban Dynamics

Abstract

Spatial cycles that are general to the urbanization process have been widely observed in the developed countries. These include (a) the decline of large agglomerations and the emergence of medium‐sized municipalities, and (b) population decreases in the core and population increases in the suburban parts of the metropolitan area, followed later by contrasting increases in the core and decreases in the suburbs. In this paper, we formulate a mathematical model for such spatial cycles of the urbanization process as those mentioned above. Based on this model, we ascertain some general characteristics of these cycles of urban dynamics. From our findings, we can propose a long‐term strategy for the urbanization process. 1987 The Ohio State University