Land-use change and Zipf’s law: A novel tool to investigate regional transformations

Business cycles have affected urbanization processes worldwide. Despite strength and pervasiveness of recent stagnation waves, empirical evidence documenting the aggregate effect of economic downturns on metropolitan growth was relatively scarce in the old continent. The present study tests – likely for the first time in the literature – a rank-size rule à la Zipf for both intensity and spatial direction of land-use changes from Urban Atlas high-resolution maps in mainland Attica, a Greek region hosting the capital city of Athens. The empirical framework proposed here integrates applied economics with regional science, spatial planning, and a classical approach of landscape ecology grounded on the exploratory analysis of land-use metrics representing parcel size and shape. To discriminate morphological and functional urbanization traits typical of expansions and recessions, a spatial econometric analysis testing Zipf’s law via Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regressions (MGWRs) quantified the differential impact of seven land-use change trajectories during two time intervals (2006–2012 and 2012–2018). Moving from the original Zipfian specification, regression models were augmented with ancillary predictors of land-use change such as parcel shape and the distance from downtown. In respect with economic expansion, recession was associated with moderately less coherent rank-size rules for land-use change, likely because crisis dynamics have stimulated use of fringe spaces for small residential settlements and alternative (non-urban) land-use. However, spatially explicit rank-size rules remain a powerful tool when investigating direction and intensity of land-use change.