Zipf's Law, Hierarchical Structure, and Cards-Shuffling Model for Urban Development

Figure 3

The scaling patterns for the hierarchy of 660 cities in China (2005). (Note: In the first two plots, the data points of the lame duck classes are treated as the outliers, which deviates from the normal scaling range because the small cities in China are of undergrowth).

(a) The scaling relation between urban population and city number

(b) The scaling relation between urban area and city number

(c) The allometric relation between urban area and population.