{"id":1804,"date":"2010-12-28T22:52:28","date_gmt":"2010-12-29T03:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=1804"},"modified":"2011-02-20T16:18:02","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T21:18:02","slug":"a-universal-theory-of-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2010\/12\/28\/a-universal-theory-of-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"A universal theory of cities"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"CC<\/a>

CC Image from lopolis<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, the New York Times Magazine featured a lengthy piece<\/a> from Jonah Lehrer about two physicists who have formulated a sort of universal law for urban living.\u00a0 The single biggest determinant of urban performance is size – increasingly large agglomerations offer economies of scale – people who live and work there are more productive, more creative, etc.\u00a0 The physicists (Geoffrey West and Luis Bettencourt) summarize their main conclusions<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Three main characteristics vary systematically with population. One, the space required per capita shrinks, thanks to denser settlement and a more intense use of infrastructure. Two, the pace of all socioeconomic activity accelerates, leading to higher productivity. And three, economic and social activities diversify and become more interdependent, resulting in new forms of economic specialization and cultural expression.<\/p>\n

We have recently shown that these general trends can be expressed as simple mathematical \u2018laws\u2019. For example, doubling the population of any city requires only about an 85% increase in infrastructure, whether that be total road surface, length of electrical cables, water pipes or number of petrol stations. This systematic 15% savings happens because, in general, creating and operating the same infrastructure at higher densities is more efficient, more economically viable, and often leads to higher-quality services and solutions that are impossible in smaller places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These core economies of scale, positive feedback loops, and benefits of agglomeration are what lets cities be cities<\/a>.\u00a0 Now, we have some math behind it.<\/p>\n

Some more quotes from the NYT Mag piece.<\/p>\n

On urban systems: <\/strong><\/p>\n

There is something deeply strange about thinking of the metropolis in such abstract terms. We usually describe cities, after all, as local entities defined by geography and history. New Orleans isn\u2019t a generic place of 336,644 people. It\u2019s the bayou and Katrina and Cajun cuisine. New York isn\u2019t just another city. It\u2019s a former Dutch fur-trading settlement, the center of the finance industry and home to the Yankees. And yet, West insists, those facts are mere details, interesting anecdotes that don\u2019t explain very much. The only way to really understand the city, West says, is to understand its deep structure, its defining patterns, which will show us whether a metropolis will flourish or fall apart. We can\u2019t make our cities work better until we know how they work. And, West says, he knows how they work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On similarities and dissimilarities to natural systems: <\/strong><\/p>\n

[T]he real purpose of cities, and the reason cities keep on growing, is their ability to create massive economies of scale, just as big animals do. After analyzing the first sets of city data \u2014 the physicists began with infrastructure and consumption statistics \u2014 they concluded that cities looked a lot like elephants. In city after city, the indicators of urban \u201cmetabolism,\u201d like the number of gas stations or the total surface area of roads, showed that when a city doubles in size, it requires an increase in resources of only 85 percent.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

What Bettencourt and West failed to appreciate, at least at first, was that the value of modern cities has little to do with energy efficiency. […] In essence, they arrive at the sensible conclusion that cities are valuable because they facilitate human interactions, as people crammed into a few square miles exchange ideas and start collaborations. \u201cIf you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons,\u201d West says. \u201cThey\u2019ve come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That\u2019s why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On positive feedback loops:<\/strong><\/p>\n

West and Bettencourt refer to this phenomenon as \u201csuperlinear scaling,\u201d which is a fancy way of describing the increased output of people living in big cities. When a superlinear equation is graphed, it looks like the start of a roller coaster, climbing into the sky. The steep slope emerges from the positive feedback loop of urban life \u2014 a growing city makes everyone in that city more productive, which encourages more people to move to the city, and so on. According to West, these superlinear patterns demonstrate why cities are one of the single most important inventions in human history. They are the idea, he says, that enabled our economic potential and unleashed our ingenuity. \u201cWhen we started living in cities, we did something that had never happened before in the history of life,\u201d West says. \u201cWe broke away from the equations of biology, all of which are sublinear. Every other creature gets slower as it gets bigger. That\u2019s why the elephant plods along. But in cities, the opposite happens. As cities get bigger, everything starts accelerating. There is no equivalent for this in nature. It would be like finding an elephant that\u2019s proportionally faster than a mouse.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scarcity is the check on this superlinear growth, and innovation is what breaks that check.<\/p>\n

On counterpoints to these universal laws:<\/strong> Lehrer quotes suburbanist Joel Kotkin in his piece, with Kotkin arguing against this logic of density and economies of scale, citing Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle.\u00a0 Kotkin is too focused on the traditional narrative of cities and suburbs, however.\u00a0 Both of those examples are still agglomeration economies, just comprised in a different physical form. A ‘city’ here is also the total urban area, not the arbitrary political boundaries that Kotkin often hangs his hat on.<\/p>\n

It’s also important to note that this kind of universal law sets the baseline for what’s to be expected of a city – certain places will under or over-perform.\u00a0 That’s where the quality of a place comes in, in my estimation.<\/p>\n

On qualitative measures: <\/strong>West and Bettencourt specifically avoid the qualitative, since they can’t measure it well with data.\u00a0 It’s important to not set qualitative and quantitative measurements in opposition, however.\u00a0 WNYC’s RadioLab delved into the qualitative aspects of what makes cities into cities back in October<\/a>.\u00a0 These different explanations of cities are not mutually exclusive.\u00a0 Indeed, they are complimentary.<\/p>\n

This discussion, both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of it, seem to further embrace the Three D’s of density, diversity, and design.\u00a0 The question is then about how to assess each of those factors.\u00a0 Given that each one of those factors can be defined expansively (diversity of people, of skills, of land use, of incomes, of languages, of cultures, etc) and not all of those varied elements can be effectively quantified, this only reinforces the co-dependence of both analytical methods.<\/p>\n

On planning: <\/strong>Lehrer closes his piece with a note about the inherent messiness of cities – the “energized crowding”, to steal a phrase from Spiro Kostof<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unlike companies, which are managed in a top-down fashion by a team of highly paid executives, cities are unruly places, largely immune to the desires of politicians and planners. \u201cThink about how powerless a mayor is,\u201d West says. \u201cThey can\u2019t tell people where to live or what to do or who to talk to. Cities can\u2019t be managed, and that\u2019s what keeps them so vibrant. They\u2019re just these insane masses of people, bumping into each other and maybe sharing an idea or two. It\u2019s the freedom of the city that keeps it alive.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One common misconception about planners and planning is that we seek to control everything.\u00a0 Instead, I am more interested in this kind of messy interaction.\u00a0 Planning is about facilitating those interactions, not about controlling them.\u00a0 For that reason, I find this kind of research fascinating.<\/p>\n

The entire piece is fantastic.\u00a0 Read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the New York Times Magazine featured a lengthy piece from Jonah Lehrer about two physicists who have formulated a sort of universal law for urban living.\u00a0 The single biggest determinant of urban performance is size – increasingly large agglomerations offer economies of scale – people who live and work there are more productive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[187,451,270,272,273,274,208,275,271,276],"class_list":["post-1804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agglomeration","tag-density","tag-economies-of-scale","tag-geoffrey-west","tag-luis-bettencourt","tag-natural-laws","tag-new-york-times","tag-quantitative","tag-superlinear-scaling","tag-systems"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-t6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1804"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1863,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1804\/revisions\/1863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}