English

Memory endowed US cities and their demographic interactions

Physics and Society 2015-03-26 v1

Abstract

A quantitative understanding of cities' demographic dynamics is becoming a potentially useful tool for planning sustainable growth. The concomitant theory should reveal details of the cities' past and also of its interaction with nearby urban conglomerates for providing a reasonably complete picture. Using the exhaustive database of the Census Bureau in a time window of 170 years, we exhibit here empirical evidence for time and space correlations in the demographic dynamics of US counties, with a characteristic memory-time of 25 years and typical distances of interaction of 200 km. These correlations are much larger than those observed in an European country (Spain), giving to the US a more coherent evolution. We also measure the resilience of US cities to historical events, finding a demographical post-traumatic amnesia after wars (as the Civil War) or economic crisis (as the 1929 Stock Market Crash).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.3918,
  title  = {Memory endowed US cities and their demographic interactions},
  author = {A. Hernando and R. Hernando and A. Plastino and E. Zambrano},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.3918},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:27:49.465Z