{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:38:13Z","timestamp":1760240293861,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":16,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,29]],"date-time":"2019-04-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1556496000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Data"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Authorities define cities\u2014or human settlements in general\u2014through imposing top-down rules in terms of whether buildings belong to cities. Emerging geospatial big data makes it possible to define cities from the bottom up, i.e., buildings determine themselves whether they belong to a city using the notion of natural cities and based on head\/tail breaks, which is a classification and visualization tool for data with a heavy-tailed distribution. In this paper, we used 125 million building locations\u2014all building footprints of America (mainland) or their centroids more precisely\u2014to generate 2.1 million natural cities in the country (see the URL as shown in the note of Figure 1). In contrast to government defined city boundaries, these natural cities constitute a valuable data source for city-related research.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/data4020059","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,29]],"date-time":"2019-04-29T07:01:22Z","timestamp":1556521282000},"page":"59","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Natural Cities Generated from All Building Locations in America"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"4","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2337-2486","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Bin","family":"Jiang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Engineering and Sustainable Development, Division of GIScience, University of G\u00e4vle, SE-801 76 G\u00e4vle, Sweden"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,29]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Wallace, T., Watkins, D., and Schwartz, J. (New York Times, 2018). A map of every building in America, New York Times."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"(2019, April 15). Computer Generated Building Footprints for the United States. Available online: https:\/\/github.com\/Microsoft\/USBuildingFootprints\/."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Bennett, J. (2010). OpenStreetMap: Be your own cartographer, PCKT Publishing."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"295","DOI":"10.1080\/00330124.2014.968886","article-title":"The evolution of natural cities from the perspective of location-based social media","volume":"67","author":"Jiang","year":"2015","journal-title":"Prof. Geogr."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few, ABACUS."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"482","DOI":"10.1080\/00330124.2012.700499","article-title":"Head\/tail breaks: A new classification scheme for data with a heavy-tailed distribution","volume":"65","author":"Jiang","year":"2013","journal-title":"Prof. Geogr."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"69","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cities.2014.11.013","article-title":"Head\/tail breaks for visualization of city structure and dynamics","volume":"43","author":"Jiang","year":"2015","journal-title":"Cities"},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"Zipf, G.K. (1949). Human Behaviour and the Principles of Least Effort, Addison Wesley."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"661","DOI":"10.1137\/070710111","article-title":"Power-law distributions in empirical data","volume":"51","author":"Clauset","year":"2009","journal-title":"SIAM Rev."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Haldorson, M., and Daher, K.B. (2019, April 15). \u00d6versyn av Metod och Definition f\u00f6r: SCBs Avgr\u00e4nsningar av Koncentrerad Bebyggelse. Available online: https:\/\/www.scb.se\/Statistik\/_Publikationer\/MI0810_2015A01_BR_MIFT1601.pdf."},{"key":"ref_11","unstructured":"Jiang, B. (2019, April 15). Natural cities in America. Available online: https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/332465822_Natural_cities_in_America."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"498","DOI":"10.1080\/13658816.2014.988715","article-title":"Zipf\u2019s Law for all the natural cities around the world","volume":"29","author":"Jiang","year":"2015","journal-title":"Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"530","DOI":"10.1080\/00045608.2013.834239","article-title":"Ht-index for quantifying the fractal or scaling structure of geographic features","volume":"104","author":"Jiang","year":"2014","journal-title":"Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr."},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"Mandelbrot, B. (1982). The Fractal Geometry of Nature, W. H. Freeman and Co."},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"Alexander, C. (2002\u20132005). The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Center for Environmental Structure. [1st ed.]."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ren, Z., Jiang, B., and Seipel, S. (2019). Capturing and predicting human activities using building locations in America. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., accepted.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi8050200"}],"container-title":["Data"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2306-5729\/4\/2\/59\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T12:48:01Z","timestamp":1760186881000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2306-5729\/4\/2\/59"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,29]]},"references-count":16,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,6]]}},"alternative-id":["data4020059"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/data4020059","relation":{},"ISSN":["2306-5729"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"2306-5729"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,29]]}}}