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Journal of Economic Geography Advance Access originally published online on February 14, 2005
Journal of Economic Geography 2005 5(4):423-448; doi:10.1093/jnlecg/lbh060
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© The Author (2005). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org

On the number and size of cities*

Takatoshi Tabuchi**, Jacques-François Thisse*** and Dao-Zhi Zeng****

** Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo
*** CORE, Université catholique de Louvain, CERAS. Ecole nationale des ponts et chaussées, and CEPR
**** Faculty of Economics, Kagawa University

This version published on 10 May 2005

We study the effects of a decrease in inter-city transport costs on the spatial distribution of population in a multi-regional economy, when a rise in the regional population generates higher urban costs. Holding the number of cities constant, as transport costs are reduced gradually from a very high level to a very low level, there is a first phase in which large cities grow while small cities shrink, a second phase in which both large and small cities grow while medium size cities shrink, and a third phase in which large cities shrink while small cities grow. Furthermore, when the number of cities is allowed to vary as transport costs are reduced from large to small values, it first decreases and then increases.

Keywords: multi-regional systems, agglomeration, transport costs, urban costs,
JEL classification: F12, L13, R13
* The first and third authors are grateful to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (Grand-in-Aid for Science Research 09CE2002, 13851002, 14730017), whereas the second author acknowledges support from the Ministère de l'éducation, de la recherche et de la formation (Communauté française de Belgique), Convention 00/05-262. All authors thank Diego Puga, three referees, Kristian Behrens, Masa Fujita, Olivier Gossner, Yoshi Kanemoto, and Tomoya Mori for helpful comments and discussions.

Date submitted: 5 February 2004     Date accepted: 17 September 2004


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