Which statement describes the Rank-Size Rule in urban hierarchy?

Which statement describes the Rank-Size Rule in urban hierarchy?

• A. The population of the nth largest city is directly proportional to its rank.
• B. The population of the nth largest settlement is 1/n the population of the largest settlement.
• C. The distance from the CBD determines land price.
• D. The fastest growing city is the capital.

Answer: (B)

The main idea is about how city sizes are distributed in an urban system. The Rank-Size Rule says that the population of the nth largest city is roughly inversely related to its rank: if the largest city has population P1, the nth largest city has about P1 divided by n. That makes the statement describing the nth largest as 1/n the population of the largest a precise expression of this pattern. It’s a simple model of urban hierarchy, often called Zipf’s principle for cities, where a few big cities dominate and many smaller ones trail off in a predictable way. Real data can vary due to history, geography, and policy, but the core idea remains that city size diminishes proportionally with rank. The other ideas describe unrelated concepts (growth tied to rank, land prices by distance from the CBD, or capital’s growth rate) and don’t capture this inverse-size ranking pattern.

The main idea is about how city sizes are distributed in an urban system. The Rank-Size Rule says that the population of the nth largest city is roughly inversely related to its rank: if the largest city has population P1, the nth largest city has about P1 divided by n. That makes the statement describing the nth largest as 1/n the population of the largest a precise expression of this pattern. It’s a simple model of urban hierarchy, often called Zipf’s principle for cities, where a few big cities dominate and many smaller ones trail off in a predictable way. Real data can vary due to history, geography, and policy, but the core idea remains that city size diminishes proportionally with rank. The other ideas describe unrelated concepts (growth tied to rank, land prices by distance from the CBD, or capital’s growth rate) and don’t capture this inverse-size ranking pattern.