ROLE OF INTERMITTENCY IN URBAN-DEVELOPMENT - A MODEL OF LARGE-SCALE CITY FORMATION

A stochastic model that incorporates the essential mechanisms supposed to govern city formation is numerically analyzed. The model generates intermittent spatiotemporal structures and predicts a power-law popul ation distribution whose exponent is in excellent agreement with the u niversal exponent observed in real human demography. Preliminary resul ts of cluster analysis of the model also coincide with actual data. We thus suggest that urban development at large scales could be driven b y intermittency processes.