scholarly journals An evolutionary theory for interpreting urban scaling laws

Cybergeo ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Pumain ◽  
Fabien Paulus ◽  
Céline Vacchiani-Marcuzzo ◽  
José Lobo
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Urban Scaling

Evidence for the homothetic scaling of urban forms

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 870-888 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rémi Lemoy ◽  
Geoffrey Caruso
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Population Density ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Radial Distance ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
City Size ◽  
Cube Root ◽  
Radial Profiles ◽  
Population Grid ◽  
Urban Scaling

The size and form of cities influence their social and environmental impacts. Whether cities have the same form irrespective of their size is still an open question. We analyse the profile of artificial land and population density, with respect to the distance to their main centre, for the 300 largest European cities. Our analysis combines the GMES/Copernicus Urban Atlas 2006 land use database at 5 m resolution for 300 larger urban zones with more than 100,000 inhabitants and the Geostat population grid at 1 km resolution. We find a remarkable constancy of radial profiles across city sizes. Artificial land profiles scale in the two horizontal dimensions with the square root of city population, while population density profiles scale in three dimensions with its cube root. In short, cities of different size are homothetic in terms of land use and population density, which challenges the idea that larger cities are more parsimonious in the use of land per capita. While earlier literature documented the scaling of average densities (total surface and population) with city size, we document the scaling of the whole radial distance profile with city size, thus liaising intra-urban radial analysis and systems of cities. Our findings also yield homogenous spatial definitions of cities, from which we can re-question urban scaling laws and Zipf’s law for cities.

scholarly journals Does metropolitan form affect transportation sustainability? Evidence from US metropolitan areas

2020 ◽  
pp. 239980832097131
Author(s):  
Andres Sevtuk ◽  
Reza Amindarbari
Keyword(s):  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Public Transit ◽  
Transit Accessibility ◽  
Transportation Sustainability ◽  
Open Source Gis ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
Urban Scaling ◽  
Cultural Origins

In this paper, we examine transportation sustainability in American metropolitan areas using transportation-related CO2 emissions, public transit accessibility, and commuting times as indicators. Though variations in these indicators may stem from historic contexts, policies, institutional arrangements, social and cultural origins, the spatial structure of metropolitan areas—in particular their formal characteristics—may also be a contributing factor. To test this relationship, we identify metropolitan form metrics from prior literature that are expected to impact transportation outcomes, and choose five metrics to which we introduce significant improvements. We apply the metrics to all 166 Combined Statistical Areas in the US, using an open-source GIS toolbox released along with the paper. Our findings demonstrate that form-based metrics provide a better explanation to CO2 emissions, public transit accessibility, and commuting times in US metro areas than the simpler population size or density metrics typically used in practice. We also show that counter to prior literature on urban scaling laws and economies of scale, which have argued that larger cities and metro areas are more sustainable per capita, transport-related CO2 emissions and transit accessibility are actually less favorable in larger CSAs when controlling for formal characteristics of metropolitan areas. Instead of scale, compactness has the highest elasticity with respect to transportation sustainability of metro areas.

scholarly journals Diverse cities or the systematic paradox of Urban Scaling Laws

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 80-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clémentine Cottineau ◽  
Erez Hatna ◽  
Elsa Arcaute ◽  
Michael Batty
Keyword(s):  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Urban Scaling

Are the absent always wrong? Dealing with zero values in urban scaling

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1663-1677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Finance ◽  
Clémentine Cottineau
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Zero Values ◽  
Urban Scaling ◽  
Definition Of

Both theoretical and empirical studies have shown the ability of scaling laws to reveal processes of emergence in urban systems. Nevertheless, a controversy about the robustness of results obtained with these models on empirical cases remains, regarding for instance the definition of the ‘city’ considered or the way the estimations are performed. Another source of bias is highlighted in this contribution, with respect to the non-ubiquitous character of some urban attributes (i.e. their partial absence from several cities of the system). The problem with the zero count for cities where these attributes are absent is that the technical necessities of usual estimation procedures make the analysis ignore them altogether even when they represent some valid information. This could seriously impact the results. A precise exploration of the effects of this arbitrary filtering is conducted here, and several solutions are proposed to overcome this limitation. In a case study about foreign investment towards French cities, we show that some erroneous conclusions about a hierarchical diffusion could be drawn when adopting the classical ordinary least squares approach. The framework we suggest specifies how it is possible to avoid misinterpretations deriving from the exclusion of zero values by using methods of analysis which deal with zero values specifically. The conclusion of a diffusion of foreign investment in the French urban system is then rejected.

scholarly journals Understanding the mesoscopic scaling patterns within cities

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Dong ◽  
Zhou Huang ◽  
Jiang Zhang ◽  
Yu Liu
Keyword(s):  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Urban Systems ◽  
Active Population ◽  
Scaling Relationship ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Simple Scaling ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Mesoscopic Level ◽  
Urban Scaling ◽  
Simple Interaction

AbstractUnderstanding quantitative relationships between urban elements is crucial for a wide range of applications. The observation at the macroscopic level demonstrates that the aggregated urban quantities (e.g., gross domestic product) scale systematically with population sizes across cities, also known as urban scaling laws. However, at the mesoscopic level, we lack an understanding of whether the simple scaling relationship holds within cities, which is a fundamental question regarding the spatial origin of scaling in urban systems. Here, by analyzing four extensive datasets covering millions of mobile phone users and urban facilities, we investigate the scaling phenomena within cities. We find that the mesoscopic infrastructure volume and socioeconomic activity scale sub- and super-linearly with the active population, respectively. For a same scaling phenomenon, however, the exponents vary in cities of similar population sizes. To explain these empirical observations, we propose a conceptual framework by considering the heterogeneous distributions of population and facilities, and the spatial interactions between them. Analytical and numerical results suggest that, despite the large number of complexities that influence urban activities, the simple interaction rules can effectively explain the observed regularity and heterogeneity in scaling behaviors within cities.

scholarly journals How the geometry of cities determines urban scaling laws

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (176) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Molinero ◽  
Stefan Thurner
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Critical Density ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Linear Scaling ◽  
Average Height ◽  
Urban Resilience ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Urban Scaling

Urban scaling laws relate socio-economic, behavioural and physical variables to the population size of cities. They allow for a new paradigm of city planning and for an understanding of urban resilience and economics. The emergence of these power-law relations is still unclear. Improving our understanding of their origin will help us to better apply them in practical applications and further research their properties. In this work, we derive the basic exponents for spatially distributed variables from fundamental fractal geometric relations in cities. Sub-linear scaling arises as the ratio of the fractal dimension of the road network and of the distribution of the population embedded in three dimensions. Super-linear scaling emerges from human interactions that are constrained by the geometry of a city. We demonstrate the validity of the framework with data from 4750 European cities. We make several testable predictions, including the relation of average height of cities and population size, and the existence of a critical density above which growth changes from horizontal densification to three-dimensional growth.

scholarly journals Digital Evolution for Ecology Research: A Review

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Dolson ◽  
Charles Ofria
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Ecological Research ◽  
Digital Evolution ◽  
Controlled System ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Evolution Systems

In digital evolution, populations of computational organisms evolve via the same principles that govern natural selection in nature. These platforms have been used to great effect as a controlled system in which to conduct evolutionary experiments and develop novel evolutionary theory. In addition to their complex evolutionary dynamics, many digital evolution systems also produce rich ecological communities. As a result, digital evolution is also a powerful tool for research on eco-evolutionary dynamics. Here, we review the research to date in which digital evolution platforms have been used to address eco-evolutionary (and in some cases purely ecological) questions. This work has spanned a wide range of topics, including competition, facilitation, parasitism, predation, and macroecological scaling laws. We argue for the value of further ecological research in digital evolution systems and present some particularly promising directions for further research.

Urban scaling in rapidly urbanising China

Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110178
Author(s):  
Weiqian Lei ◽  
Limin Jiao ◽  
Gang Xu ◽  
Zhengzi Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Urban Population ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Temporal Evolution ◽  
Urban System ◽  
Scaling Analysis ◽  
Scaling Exponent ◽  
Scaling Exponents ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
Urban Scaling

Understanding the scaling characteristics in China is critical for perceiving the development process of rapidly urbanising countries. This paper conducts a comprehensive scaling analysis with quantitative assessment of a large number of diverse urban indicators of 275 Chinese cities. Our findings confirm that urban scaling laws can also be applied to rapidly urbanising China but demonstrate some unique features echoing its distinct urbanisation. Chinese urban population agglomeration results in more effective economic production but the economies of scale for infrastructure are less obvious. Some urban indicators associated with infrastructure and living facilities surprisingly scale super-linearly with urban population size, contrary to expected sublinear scaling behaviours. In developing countries, different-sized cities have diverse agglomeration, industrial and resource allocation advantages, which can be reflected by scaling exponents. We characterise these unique features in detail, exploring the spatial disparities and temporal evolution of scaling exponents ( β). Strong regional variations and differences are particularly pronounced in Northeast China and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration. Scaling exponent variations over time reflect the temporal evolution of the urban system and measure the coordination and balance of urbanisation. Economic output was most efficient in 2009 and β of GDP was slightly greater than 1.15 in recent years. Urban land expansion has been accelerating since 2000 with β remaining around 0.85–0.90. The study of urban scaling in China is enlightening in elaborating the uniqueness and coordination of urban development in rapidly urbanising countries and provides support in formulating differentiated urban planning for different-sized cities to promote coordinated development.

scholarly journals Urban scaling laws

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (9) ◽  
pp. 1605-1610
Author(s):  
Diego Rybski ◽  
Elsa Arcaute ◽  
Michael Batty
Keyword(s):  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Urban Scaling

scholarly journals A model of urban scaling laws based on distance dependent interactions

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 160926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiano L. Ribeiro ◽  
Joao Meirelles ◽  
Fernando F. Ferreira ◽  
Camilo Rodrigues Neto
Keyword(s):  
Scaling Laws ◽  
Economic Indicators ◽  
Simple Explanation ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Scaling Exponents ◽  
Interaction Range ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Fractal Properties ◽  
Urban Scaling ◽  
The City

Socio-economic related properties of a city grow faster than a linear relationship with the population, in a log–log plot, the so-called superlinear scaling . Conversely, the larger a city, the more efficient it is in the use of its infrastructure, leading to a sublinear scaling on these variables. In this work, we addressed a simple explanation for those scaling laws in cities based on the interaction range between the citizens and on the fractal properties of the cities. To this purpose, we introduced a measure of social potential which captured the influence of social interaction on the economic performance and the benefits of amenities in the case of infrastructure offered by the city. We assumed that the population density depends on the fractal dimension and on the distance-dependent interactions between individuals. The model suggests that when the city interacts as a whole, and not just as a set of isolated parts, there is improvement of the socio-economic indicators. Moreover, the bigger the interaction range between citizens and amenities, the bigger the improvement of the socio-economic indicators and the lower the infrastructure costs of the city. We addressed how public policies could take advantage of these properties to improve cities development, minimizing negative effects. Furthermore, the model predicts that the sum of the scaling exponents of social-economic and infrastructure variables are 2, as observed in the literature. Simulations with an agent-based model are confronted with the theoretical approach and they are compatible with the empirical evidences.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document