  Multifractal analysis offers a number of advantages to measure spatial
economic segregation and inequality, as it is free of categories and boundaries
definition problems and is insensitive to some shape-preserving changes in the
variable distribution. We use two datasets describing Kyoto land prices in 1912
and 2012 and derive city models from this data to show that multifractal
analysis is suitable to describe the heterogeneity of land prices. We found in
particular a sharp decrease in multifractality, characteristic of
homogenisation, between older Kyoto and present Kyoto, and similarities both
between present Kyoto and present London, and between Kyoto and Manhattan as
they were a century ago. In addition, we enlighten the preponderance of spatial
distribution over variable distribution in shaping the multifractal spectrum.
The results were tested against the classical segregation and inequality
indicators, and found to offer an improvement over those.
