City seeds: Geography and the origins of the European city system

Cities are the focal points of the world economy. This paper sheds new empirical light on their origins. Using a new dataset covering over 250,000 randomly selected potential city locations, and all actual cities during the period 800-1800, we disentangle the different roles of geography in shaping today's European city system. We find that a location's physical geography characteristics are the dominant determinants of its urban chances. Preferential location for water- or land-based transportation is a particularly important city seed. In addition, a location's position relative to already-existing cities matters for its urban chances. Interestingly, it does so in a way corresponding to predictions from economic geography theory.