Cities continue to grow, and the increase of impervious surface area is becoming a primary indicator of urbanization as well as environmental quality. Evaluating how impervious surfaces are shaped and distributed across urban systems can provide key insights into how cities are impacting global environmental change and how their impacts might change as cities evolve and grow. Many urban characteristics, both physical and social, have been found to follow power law distributions across a system of cities, but it is not yet know whether urban configurational characteristics adhere to these laws. This study seeks to determine if the relationship between impervious surface area as a dimension of urban size and a suite of spatial metrics measuring urban configuration follow power law-like relationship distributions across a hierarchy of cities in the urban system of Mexico. Results suggest that several metrics do follow these characteristic patterns and that configuration complexity increases with city size, but at a slower rate than impervious surface. Scaling exponents, which can provide insights into system dynamics and the mechanisms driving relationships, were sublinear for certain metrics, supporting similar extant work, but deviated from theorized values.

城市持续增长，不可渗透的表面积的增加正成为城市化以及环境质量的主要指标。评估不透水表面在整个城市系统中的形成和分布方式，可以提供有关城市如何影响全球环境变化以及其影响随着城市发展和增长而变化的关键见解。已经发现，许多城市特征，无论是物质特征还是社会特征，都遵循整个城市系统中的幂定律分布，但是尚不知道城市配置特征是否遵守这些定律。这项研究试图确定不透水表面面积（作为城市规模的一个维度）与一组测量城市配置的空间度量之间的关系是否遵循了墨西哥城市系统中各个城市层次结构中类似幂律的关系分布。结果表明，一些度量标准确实遵循了这些特征模式，并且配置复杂性随城市规模的增加而增加，但其速度要比不透水的表面慢。比例指数可以提供对系统动力学和驱动关系的机制的深入了解，对于某些度量而言是次线性的，支持类似的现存工作，但偏离了理论值。但速度要比不透水的表面慢。比例指数可以提供对系统动力学和驱动关系的机制的深入了解，对于某些度量而言是次线性的，支持类似的现存工作，但偏离了理论值。但速度要比不透水的表面慢。比例指数可以提供对系统动力学和驱动关系的机制的深入了解，对于某些度量而言是次线性的，支持类似的现存工作，但偏离了理论值。