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Scaling laws and the modern city

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  • Isalgue, Antonio
  • Coch, Helena
  • Serra, Rafael

Abstract

The inter-relations and the complexity of modern urban spaces are difficult to analyse in a way that allows improving living conditions or help to ascertain optimal decisions for saving energy or improving sustainability. Carefully designed decisions and guidelines might produce unexpected results because of particularities, or complex sets of reactions from residents or economic counterparts. Complexity tends to increase with size, such as when, for instance, services tend to concentrate in large agglomerations, and transportation needs take on critical importance. Complex systems such as living organisms are known to follow approximate relationships as scaling laws between the variables that describe them. Some of these kinds of relationships are tested in relation to modern developed urban spaces, in which it is possible to find a reasonable continuity with the types of scales seen in living organisms, and some preliminary conclusions are drawn.

Suggested Citation

  • Isalgue, Antonio & Coch, Helena & Serra, Rafael, 2007. "Scaling laws and the modern city," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 382(2), pages 643-649.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:382:y:2007:i:2:p:643-649
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2007.04.019
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Lunchao Hu & Kailan Tian & Xin Wang & Jiang Zhang, 2011. "The "S" Curve Relationship between Export Diversity and Economic Size of Countries," Papers 1105.5891, arXiv.org.
    2. Hu, Lunchao & Tian, Kailan & Wang, Xin & Zhang, Jiang, 2012. "The “S” curve relationship between export diversity and economic size of countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(3), pages 731-739.
    3. Massimo Palme & José Guerra Ramírez, 2013. "A Critical Assessment and Projection of Urban Vertical Growth in Antofagasta, Chile," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(7), pages 1-16, June.
    4. Dalgaard, Carl-Johan & Strulik, Holger, 2011. "Energy distribution and economic growth," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 782-797.
    5. Massimo Palme & Agnese Salvati, 2020. "Sustainability and Urban Metabolism," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-3, January.
    6. Martin Duin, 2024. "Dissipative systems have a maximum energy rate density of 105 W/kg," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 97(11), pages 1-11, November.
    7. Zhang, Jiang & Yu, Tongkui, 2010. "Allometric scaling of countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(21), pages 4887-4896.
    8. Michele Morganti & Anna Pages-Ramon & Helena Coch & Antonio Isalgue, 2019. "Buildingmass and Energy Demand in Conventional Housing Typologies of the Mediterranean City," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-18, June.
    9. Mohamed R Ibrahim & James Haworth & Tao Cheng, 2021. "URBAN-i: From urban scenes to mapping slums, transport modes, and pedestrians in cities using deep learning and computer vision," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 48(1), pages 76-93, January.

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