Uncovering inequality through multifractality of land prices: 1912 Kyoto, a case study

TL;DR

This study applies multifractal analysis to historical and modern land price data in Kyoto, revealing changes in spatial heterogeneity and inequality over time, and comparing these patterns with other global cities.

Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of multifractal analysis in measuring land price heterogeneity and inequality, highlighting its advantages over traditional indicators.

Findings

Sharp decrease in multifractality from 1912 to 2012 Kyoto

Similar multifractal patterns between present Kyoto and London, Manhattan in 1912

Multifractal analysis outperforms classical inequality measures

Abstract

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 multifractality, 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.