Related papers: Large cities are less green
We have assembled CO2 emission figures from collections of urban GHG emission estimates published in peer reviewed journals or reports from research institutes and non-governmental organizations. Analyzing the scaling with population size…
We show that the definition of the city boundaries can have a dramatic influence on the scaling behavior of the night-time light (NTL) as a function of population (POP) in the US. Precisely, our results show that the arbitrary geopolitical…
The question of whether urbanization contributes to increasing carbon dioxide emissions has been mainly investigated via scaling relationships with population or population density. However, these approaches overlook the correlations…
The recent availability of data for cities has allowed scientists to exhibit scalings which present themselves in the form of a power-law dependence with population of various socio-economical and structural indicators. We propose here a…
Scaling has been proposed as a powerful tool to analyze the properties of complex systems, and in particular for cities where it describes how various properties change with population. The empirical study of scaling on a wide range of…
An important issue in the study of cities is defining a metropolitan area, as different definitions affect the statistical distribution of urban activity. A commonly employed method of defining a metropolitan area is the Metropolitan…
Understanding how nitrogen dioxide (NO2) varies both within and across cities is essential for assessing urban health inequalities, yet the joint influence of city size and internal structure remains poorly quantified. While it is expected…
Combining global gridded population and fossil fuel based CO2 emission data at 1km scale, we investigate the spatial origin of CO2 emissions in relation to the population distribution within countries. We depict the correlations between…
The scaling relations between city attributes and population are emergent and ubiquitous aspects of urban growth. Quantifying these relations and understanding their theoretical foundation, however, is difficult due to the challenge of…
Cities are often compared through scaling laws, usually expressed as power-law relations between population size and aggregate urban quantities related to infrastructure, socioeconomic activity, or environmental impacts. These laws are…
The amount of data that is being gathered about cities is increasing in size and specificity. However, despite this wealth of information, we still have little understanding of what really drives the processes behind urbanisation. In this…
The shape of buildings plays a critical role in the energy efficiency, lifestyles, land use and infrastructure systems of cities. Thus, as most of the world's cities continue to grow and develop, understanding the interplay between the…
Ecosystems and other naturally resilient systems exhibit allometric scaling in the distribution of sizes of their elements. In this paper we define an allometry inspired scaling indicator for cities that is a first step towards quantifying…
Using a geographical scale-free network to describe relations between people in a city, we explain both superlinear and sublinear allometric scaling of urban indicators that quantify activities or performances of the city. The urban…
In this commentary we discuss the validity of scaling laws and their relevance for understanding urban systems and helping policy makers. We show how the recent controversy about the scaling of CO2 transport-related emissions with…
We investigated the socioeconomic scaling behavior of all cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in the Netherlands and found significant superlinear scaling of gross urban product with population size. Of these cities, 22 major cities…
A longstanding puzzle in urban science is whether there's an intrinsic match between human populations and the mass of their built environments. Previous findings have revealed various urban properties scaling nonlinearly with population,…
A good understanding of cities is crucial to implement urban planning policies leading to social and economic sustainability and an efficient use of resources. While urban concentration has been associated with both positive and negative…
We analyze the congestion data collected by a GPS device company (TomTom) for almost 300 urban areas in the world. Using simple scaling arguments and data fitting we show that congestion during peak hours in large cities grows essentially…
Urban scaling laws relate socio-economic, behavioral, and physical variables to the population size of cities and allow for a new paradigm of city planning, and an understanding of urban resilience and economies. Independently of culture…