Willet/Geography of Urbanism, 5. The Urban Hierarchy

This chapter focuses on the size of cities in Asia Minor, the hierarchy between cities and how these may relate to the economic integration of the Roman Empire. The chapter starts off by exploring the bodies of evidence and how the size of a city is defined, after which the geographical distribution is explored. The differences in the sizes of cities over the regions within Asia Minor (the urban hierarchy) is explored. From this, the claim that such hierarchies are an effect of the degree of economic integration is tested by exploring the independence and interdependence of cities through their food supply, coin supply and pottery trade.