IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/phsmap/v419y2015icp668-674.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is there enough fertile soil to feed a planet of growing cities?

Author

Listed:
  • D’Autilia, Roberto
  • D’Ambrosi, Ilaria

Abstract

We analyze a scaling law for the consumption of agricultural soil by cities. The nonlinear dependence of the size of the city on the number of inhabitants gives rise to an equation for population dynamics. We found the asymptotic limit of the solution for this equation, given by the carrying capacity in terms of number of inhabitants that can be fed. The carrying capacity as a function of the scaling law exponent is computed numerically, showing that the exponent must be very small to ensure a food sustainability. We suggest a bound for the value of this exponent and analyze the reliability of the scaling law for major cities.

Suggested Citation

  • D’Autilia, Roberto & D’Ambrosi, Ilaria, 2015. "Is there enough fertile soil to feed a planet of growing cities?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 419(C), pages 668-674.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:419:y:2015:i:c:p:668-674
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2014.10.048
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437114008863
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.physa.2014.10.048?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hernán D. Rozenfeld & Diego Rybski & Xavier Gabaix & Hernán A. Makse, 2011. "The Area and Population of Cities: New Insights from a Different Perspective on Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2205-2225, August.
    2. Headey, Derek & Fan, Shenggen, 2010. "Reflections on the global food crisis: How did it happen? How has it hurt? And how can we prevent the next one?," Research reports 165, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rafael González-Val & Arturo Ramos & Fernando Sanz-Gracia & María Vera-Cabello, 2015. "Size distributions for all cities: Which one is best?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(1), pages 177-196, March.
    2. de Bellefon, Marie-Pierre & Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Duranton, Gilles & Gobillon, Laurent & Gorin, Clément, 2021. "Delineating urban areas using building density," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    3. Bala, Alain Pholo & Peeters, Dominique & Thomas, Isabelle, 2014. "Spatial issues on a hedonic estimation of rents in Brussels," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 104-123.
    4. Diana Gutiérrez Posada & Fernando Rubiera Morollón & Ana Viñuela, 2018. "Ageing Places in an Ageing Country: The Local Dynamics of the Elderly Population in Spain," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 109(3), pages 332-349, July.
    5. Massing, Till & Puente-Ajovín, Miguel & Ramos, Arturo, 2020. "On the parametric description of log-growth rates of cities’ sizes of four European countries and the USA," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 551(C).
    6. Dingel, Jonathan I. & Miscio, Antonio & Davis, Donald R., 2021. "Cities, lights, and skills in developing economies," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    7. Yousef Ahmad El Dameh & Hamad AL Ghadeer, 2021. "The Impact of Traditional Direct Marketing on Creating Brand Awareness: Case Study on IKEA in Jordan," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 14(3), pages 130-130, July.
    8. Ivanic, Maros & Martin, Will & Zaman, Hassan, 2012. "Estimating the Short-Run Poverty Impacts of the 2010–11 Surge in Food Prices," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(11), pages 2302-2317.
    9. Pengfei Ban & Wei Zhan & Qifeng Yuan & Xiaojian Li, 2021. "Delineating the Urban Areas of a Cross-Boundary City with Open-Access Data: Guangzhou–Foshan, South China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-17, March.
    10. Duranton, Gilles & Puga, Diego, 2014. "The Growth of Cities," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 5, pages 781-853, Elsevier.
    11. Rémi Lemoy & Geoffrey Caruso, 2020. "Evidence for the homothetic scaling of urban forms," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 47(5), pages 870-888, June.
    12. Gilberto Seravalli, 2016. "Dimensioni e crescita delle citt? in Europa: l?incertezza danneggia soprattutto le citt? medie," SCIENZE REGIONALI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 91-108.
    13. Davinson Stev Abril‐Salcedo & Luis Fernando Melo‐Velandia & Daniel Parra‐Amado, 2020. "Nonlinear relationship between the weather phenomenon El niño and Colombian food prices," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 64(4), pages 1059-1086, October.
    14. Sen, Hu & Chunxia, Yang & Xueshuai, Zhu & Zhilai, Zheng & Ya, Cao, 2015. "Distributions of region size and GDP and their relation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 430(C), pages 46-56.
    15. Patrick Erik Bradley & Martin Behnisch, 2019. "Heavy-tailed distributions for building stock data," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 46(7), pages 1281-1296, September.
    16. Ramos, Arturo, 2019. "Addenda to “Are the log-growth rates of city sizes distributed normally? Empirical evidence for the USA [Empir. Econ. (2017) 53:1109-1123]”," MPRA Paper 93032, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Arturo, Ramos, 2019. "Have the log-population processes stationary and independent increments? Empirical evidence for Italy, Spain and the USA along more than a century," MPRA Paper 93562, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Headey, Derek, 2011. "Rethinking the global food crisis: The role of trade shocks," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 136-146, April.
    19. Galdo, Virgilio & Li, Yue & Rama, Martin, 2021. "Identifying urban areas by combining human judgment and machine learning: An application to India," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    20. Richard Bluhm & Christian Lessmann & Paul Schaudt, 2021. "The Political Geography of Cities," SoDa Laboratories Working Paper Series 2021-11, Monash University, SoDa Laboratories.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:419:y:2015:i:c:p:668-674. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/physica-a-statistical-mechpplications/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.