Suburbanization and the rank-size rule

In this article, we revisit Zipf's law and test the rank- size rule on US cities for different periods of time and city limits. We show that Zipf's law holds more closely for urban places in 1900 and recently, in 1990 and 2000, for metropolitan areas. With the evolution of the modern city, the changes in infrastructure and the cost of commuting that have contributed to an urban spread, the metropolitan area is perhaps representing today's communities better, as urban places did 100 years ago. In that sense, the rank- size rule continues to hold with the appropriate redefinition of a city.