Proposed method for determining the population carrying capacity of cities: the city-mass index

Increasing urbanisation has led to changes in the population distribution in cities and, thus, unbalanced urban development. This study aimed to estimate the current population loads of cities by determining the balanced distribution of a country’s population on the basis of the natural, physical and sectoral factors in cities. The study was informed by the following perspective: cities are not independent structures. They belong to an ecosystem that includes the other cities in the country; thus, their share of the population should be in accordance with their stiffness calculated from its natural, physical and sectoral factors. An outcome of the study is to suggest the city-mass index model, which is inspired by the body mass index, to estimate the population loads of cities. The theoretical model, whose effectiveness was confirmed by the results of the analytical hierarchical process, was tested in Turkey and converted into concrete outputs.