Proposed method for determining the population carrying capacity of cities: the city-mass index

摘要

Increasing urbanisation has led to changes in the population distribution in cities and, thus, unbalanced urbandevelopment. This study aimed to estimate the current population loads of cities by determining the balanceddistribution of a country’s population on the basis of the natural, physical and sectoral factors in cities. The studywas informed by the following perspective: cities are not independent structures. They belong to an ecosystem thatincludes the other cities in the country; thus, their share of the population should be in accordance with theirstiffness calculated from its natural, physical and sectoral factors. An outcome of the study is to suggest the citymassindex model, which is inspired by the body mass index, to estimate the population loads of cities. Thetheoretical model, whose effectiveness was confirmed by the results of the analytical hierarchical process, was testedin Turkey and converted into concrete outputs.