Qualitative Analysis of Two-Dimensional Urban Employee Distributions in Japan: A Comparative Study with Urban Population Distributions by Means of Graph Theoretic Surface Analysis

Since the 1950s, extensive researches have been conducted to study urban population distribution. Okabe (1981) has proposed a graph theoretic method in order to make intercity comparison easier, holding the two-dimensional characteristics of the distribution. Using this method, unlike some one-dimensional descriptions of population density including the pioneering work of Clark (1951), the two-dimensional population distributions of the 245 cities in Japan have been studied by Okabe and Masuda (1984). In relation to the size of the population, the shape of the city area, and the subdivision of city area by rivers, some empirical results were reported concerning the emergence of polycentric patterns and doughnut phenomena.