Zipf's Law and urban growth in Malaysia

Soo, K T (2005) Zipf's Law and urban growth in Malaysia. Working Paper. The Department of Economics, Lancaster University.

Abstract

This paper performs a test of Zipf's Law (the size distribution of cities follows a Pareto distribution with shape parameter equal to 1) using data for Malaysian cities from five population censuses (1957, 1970, 1980, 1991 and 2000). We reject Zipf's Law for all periods except 1957, in favour of a city size distribution that is more unequal than would be predicted by Zipf's Law. We also find evidence against Gibrat's Law of proportional growth: smaller cities grow faster, as do state capitals and cities in the states of Sabah and Selangor.