Related papers: The Coherence of US cities
This chapter examines the possibility to analyze and compare human activities in an urban environment based on the detection of mobile phone usage patterns. Thanks to an unprecedented collection of counter data recording the number of…
Countries and cities are likely to enter economic activities that are related to those that are already present in them. Yet, while these path dependencies are universally acknowledged, we lack an understanding of the diversification…
Agglomeration economies drive urban growth at different spatial scales by enabling productivity gains, knowledge spillovers, and shared inputs among proximate firms and amenities. To develop a unified science of cities it is thus important…
There is nowadays considerable interest on ways to quantify the dynamics of research activities, in part due to recent changes in research and development (R&D) funding. Here, we seek to quantify and analyze university research activities,…
Many large cities are found at locations with certain first nature advantages. Yet, those exogenous locational features may not be the most potent forces governing the spatial pattern of cities. In particular, population size, spacing and…
The relationships between diversity, productivity and scale determine much of the structure and robustness of complex biological and social systems. While arguments for the link between specialization and productivity are common, diversity…
The aim here is to address the origins of sustainability for the real growth rate in the United States. For over a century of observations on the real GDP per capita of the United States a sustainable two percent growth rate has been…
Understanding scaling relations of social and environmental attributes of urban systems is necessary for effectively managing cities. Urban scaling theory (UST) has assumed that population density scales positively with city size. We…
The future of the human race is urban. The world's population is projected to grow an additional 2.5 billion by 2050, with all expected to live in urban areas. This will increase the percentage of urban population from 55% today to 70%…
Given the rapid recent trend of urbanization, a better understanding of how urban infrastructure mediates socioeconomic interactions and economic systems is of vital importance. While the accessibility of location-enabled devices as well as…
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…
We analyze the decisive role played by the complexity of economic systems at the onset of the industrialization process of countries over the past 50 years. Our analysis of the input growth dynamics, based on a recently introduced measure…
The share of the world population living in cities with more than one million people rose from 11% in 1975 to 24% in 2025 (our estimates). Will this trend towards greater concentration in large cities continue or level off? We introduce two…
Transportation networks serve as windows into the complex world of urban systems. By properly characterizing a road network, we can therefore better understand its encompassing urban system. This study offers a geometrical approach towards…
For Adam Smith, wealth was related to the division of labor. As people and firms specialize in different activities, economic efficiency increases, suggesting that development is associated with an increase in the number of individual…
Economic activities favor mutual geographical proximity and concentrate spatially to form cities. In a world of diminishing transport costs, however, the advantage of physical proximity is fading, and the role of cities in the economy may…
Modern economies require increasingly diverse and specialized skills, many of which depend on the acquisition of other skills first. Here we analyse US survey data to reveal a nested structure within skill portfolios, where the direction of…
We show here that population growth, resolved at the county level, is spatially heterogeneous both among and within the U.S. metropolitan statistical areas. Our analysis of data for over 3,100 U.S. counties reveals that annual population…
Recent studies highlight economic complexity's role in mitigating fiscal crises, often measured via an economy's trade structure. Trade, however, is just one facet of an economy's structure and omits critical innovative activities like…
What people buy is an important aspect or view of lifestyles. Studying people's shopping patterns in different urban regions can not only provide valuable information for various commercial opportunities, but also enable a better…