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Examines the differentiation introduced into the central place hierarchy by metropolitan influences with improvement of highways and extension of commuting range in Washington. Development of population; Specialization of the business pattern within the metropolitan community; Paucity of highway-oriented and urban arterial business types.

Examines the research methods and the findings of several studies of urban business in Chicago, Illinois. Information concerning urban business pattern, including a classification of business types and shopping centers; Application of the classification of business types developed; Study of business establishments located in ribbons along major arterial highways.

Examines problem of repeated regularities of patterns of occurrence of city sizes. Comparison of city populations and ranks; Elaboration of rank-size regularities; Size classes of cities.

Abstract: Four phases of interest in the distribution of city sizes are identified and current conflict in the literature is shown to be a consequence of poorly-selected units of observation. When urban regions are properly defined, US urban growth obeys Gibrat’s Law and the city size distribution is strictly Zipfian rank-size with coefficient q =1.0. Care has to be taken with definition of the largest urban-economic regions, however; the fit in the upper tail of the distribution is best when they are recognized to be megalopolitan in scale. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]