Agglomeration Economies and Urban Location Benefits: The Debate Around the Existence of an Optimal City Size

The aim of the paper is to present a critical view of theoretical works on city size. Our consideration is that during the sixties and seventies the question of optimal city-size tended to be expressed in a misleading way. The real issue is not “optimal city size” but “efficient size”, which depends on the functional characteristics of the city and on the spatial organisation within the urban system. The paper provides empirical evidence of the role played by network integration and urban function on increasing returns to urban size on two samples of Italian and European cities.