134 Thirty-eight urban regions
Tegucigalpa (Honduras)
Golfo de Fonseca. Danli. Comayagua. Comayaguela. Parque Nacional
La Tigra. Parque El Obrero. Ojojona. Escuela Agricola Panamericana. El Sauce.
Cerro Grande. Rio Hondo. La Cuesta No. 2. Talanga. Mata de Platano. Santa Ana.
Sabanagrande. El Paraiso. Montana El Chile. Las Mesas. El Oro. Rio Choluteca.
El Uyuca. San Antonio. Angalteca. Pacific, Nicaragua, and El Salvador to south.
Caribbean to north. Romantic Parque La Leona. (2001 pop.; 1999 image)Tehran (Iran)
Karaj. Namak Lake. Alborz Mountains. Kuh-e Damavand volcano at
5601 m. Qom. Garmsar. Varamin. Lar River Reservoir. Eslamshar. Saran. Baqer
Abad. Shemshak. Rey. Shariyar. Bumehen. Dasht-e-Kavir Desert. Caspian Sea, Azer-
baijan, and Armenia to north. Mountain ridges. Salt flats. Irrigating the bloom-
ing desert. Palm shade. (1999 pop.; 2000 image)Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia)
Ulan Bator. Druumod. Chentejn. Nuruu. Altanbulag. Darhan. Tuul Gol.
Jargalant. Mandal. Ihsuuj. Tov. Nalayh. Zuunmod. Assait Hairhan. Ikh Khorig.
North GobiDesert. Kerulen River to east. Chinese Inner Mongolia to south. Water
that ends up in Lake Baikal of Siberian Russia to north. Tundra-covered mountain
ridges. Rushing rivers. Felt walls (yerts) on the move. Zud. Dung for life. Wolves.
Camels. Cold. Grassland. (2000 pop.; 2001 image)Broad patterns of the urban-region set
The 38 cities are no random sample of the world’s cities. Nor are they
explicitly a representative sample. The selection process mainly eliminated cities
near other major cities. It eliminated outliers (e.g., Rio de Janeiro, Miami, Johan-
nesburg, New York, Venice) whose patterns might not readily extrapolate to other
cities. Putting those two constraints aside, the process did choose a range of at
least somewhat representative urban regions worldwide so that results should
be widely extrapolable. As still more regions are analyzed, the central tendencies
and variability will become clearer.
Before dissecting the regions individually and comparing them, a brief
overview of the total set is useful. City populations ranged fromc.260 000
(Rahimyar Khan) to 11 million (Beijing), with a fairly even distribution in
multiples-of-two size classes (0.25--0.5, 0.5--1, 1--2 million, etc.) (Table 5.1). The
six broad geographic areas (somewhat similar to continents) each has five to
eight urban regions represented. Thirty-one nations are represented. Latitudes
range from 56◦N(Moscow) across the equator (Nairobi, Samarinda) to 35◦S