Is the Zipf law spurious in explaining city-size distributions?

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Zipf's Law for Cities in the Regions and the Country (2011, unknown): “9It is known from Monte Carlo studies that R2 levels tend to be generically high in Zipf regressions as a result of the ordering of cities by rank (see Gan et al. 2006).”
The city size distribution debate: Resolution for US urban regions and megalopolitan areas (2012, unknown): “Gan et al. (2006) show via Monte Carlo simulation that the law is a statistical phenomenon that does not require an economic theory.”
Spatial scaling of stable night lights (2011, background): “While there have been challenges to the validity of Zipf's Law (e.g. Gan et al., 2006; Nitsch, 2005), numerous examples have been found for city size distributions within specific countries over the past 100 years in which the law appears to hold remarkably well (see Gabaix et al., 2004 and Pumain,…”