What is the rank-size distribution of a settlement and why is it important?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: In many developed countries, geographers observe that ranking settlements from largest to smallest produces a regular pattern or hierarchy. This is the rank-size rule, in which the country's nth-largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement. A country's second-largest city is one-half the size of the largest, the fourth-largest city is one-fourth the size of the largest, and so on. When plotted on logarithmic paper, the rank-size distribution forms a fairly straight line. The distribution of settlements closely follows the rank-size rule in the United States and a handful of other countries. If the settlement hierarchy does not graph as a straight line (on a logarithmic scale), then the society does not have a rank-size distribution of settlements.

Several developed countries in Europe follow the rank-size distribution among smaller settlements but not among the largest ones. Instead, the largest settlement in these countries follows the primate city rule. According to the primate city rule, the largest settlement has more than twice as many people as the second ranking settlement. In this distribution, the country's largest city is called the primate city. The existence of a rank-size distribution of settlements is not merely a mathematical curiosity. It has a real impact on the quality of life for a country's inhabitants. A regular hierarchy, as in the United States, indicates that the society is sufficiently wealthy to justify the provision of goods and services to consumers throughout the country.

Conversely, the primate city distribution in a developing country indicates that there is not enough
wealth in the society to pay for a full variety of services.