Uncovering inequality through multifractality of land prices: 1912 and contemporary Kyoto

Hadrien Salat, Roberto Murcio, Keiji Yano, Elsa Arcaute, Francois G. Schmitt
2018 PLoS ONE  
Multifractal analysis offers a number of advantages to measure spatial economic segregation and inequality, as it is free of categories and boundaries definition problems and is insensitive to some shape-preserving changes in the variable distribution. We use two datasets describing Kyoto land prices in 1912 and 2012 and derive city models from this data to show that multifractal analysis is suitable to describe the heterogeneity of land prices. We found in particular a sharp decrease in
more » ... actality, characteristic of homogenisation, between older Kyoto and present Kyoto, and similarities both between present Kyoto and present London, and between Kyoto and Manhattan as they were a century ago. In addition, we enlighten the preponderance of spatial distribution over variable distribution in shaping the multifractal spectrum. The results were tested against the classical segregation and inequality indicators, and found to offer an improvement over those.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0196737 pmid:29709024 pmcid:PMC5927455 fatcat:shfqhj4dz5aohn6tktpdd3lh3i