The Structure of Urban Systems by John Marshall

As the world's population is increasingly concentrated in urban centres, urban systems analysis has become a critical field of research - one that overlaps the traditional academic territories of geography, economics, and regional science. John Marshall defines urban systems analysis as a study of the spatial organization of networks of urban centres at regional, national, and international scales. In this introduction to the subject he presents a framework for its study. Marshall maintains that the study of the structure and development of urban systems should be guided by a principle-based framework in which the themes of location, economic functions, and population size are in the foreground. He outlines how urban systems analysis seeks to provide `insight into the roles performed by urban centres as elements of the gran process of settlement and development of the earth by humankind.'
Binding: Paperback / softback