(highlight:: Sub-linear Scaling in Cities: Physical Factors and Efficiency
Summary:
Sub-linear scaling refers to the phenomenon where the physical aspects of a system or city, such as infrastructure and road length, do not need to be increased by the same percentage as the increase in size.
For example, doubling the size of a city only requires a 15 percent increase in these factors, resulting in a 15 percent saving.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
So sub-linear scaling is all to do with the physical aspects of a system or a city like the infrastructure and the length of the roads. And what we find is that if we double the size of a city, in other words if we increase it by 100 percent, we don't actually need to increase these physical factors by 100 percent. We only need to increase them by about 85 percent. So we get this 15 percent saving when we double the size of a city. That's sub-linear scaling.)
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- sub-linear scaling, municipal infrastructure,

Super-linear Scaling in Cities Causes More of Everything (Both Good and Bad
Summary:
Cities experience super-linear scaling, meaning that as city size increases by 100 percent, the benefits such as increased patents and wages actually exceed 100 percent, reaching around 115 percent.
However, this scaling also leads to negative aspects like higher disease rates and crime.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Now when we go to super-linear scaling this tends to be related to the social aspects and the social networks that are in cities. So the number of patents that a city produced, so the wages that people in that city typically receive. And what we find with super-linear scaling as the name suggests is that if we increase the city size by 100 percent, we actually get more than 100 percent because of super-linear scaling. We get about 115 percent. So we get this 15 percent bonus on many of these good things like patents and wages. And we also, because we're on the social side of things, we also get bad things like more disease and more crime and issues like that.)
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(highlight:: Cities Accelerate Social Life
Summary:
In New York City, wages follow a surprising pattern - they increase in a super linear way as cities grow larger.
This means that as cities double in size, wages increase by about 15-16%. This pattern has been observed since 1969 and is consistent over time.
Interestingly, this super linear pattern is unique to economics and is not found in biology.
This finding implies that as people earn more money, they also spend more and life becomes faster.
This pattern has been observed in other data related to crime and behavior, highlighting the accelerating social life as captured by a simple mathematical signature.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
In New York City, wages are higher than in a small city. But what was surprising was there was a very, very clean pattern that when you plot them in a certain way, so, you know, in skilling plots, it's a power law. So, if you plot them in logarithms, it turns out that it's a straight line. And then it means, essentially, that as you consider cities that are double the size, you had an increase in about 15, 16 percent in wages. Very, very clean pattern. And then we looked at this over time. There was data like this since 1969, it turns out absolutely conserved. So, it just blew our minds. But what was interesting about this, so we came to talk about that pattern as being a super linear pattern, meaning that wages are increasing faster than proportionally, linearly. So, that's why they're higher in logicities. But then, there were no super linear patterns in biology. Everything was sublinear. It was sort of a saving in energy with body size. So, this is a new thing. So, that was a big puzzle to begin with. But very interesting, because it meant in some sense, people make more money. They spend more money. Life goes faster. A bunch of things will happen. What was very important is that we started seeing that pattern in other data in quantities that were not economic to do with crime and behavior and many other things. So, this acceleration of social life has a very simple mathematical signature.)
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(highlight:: The Output of a City is a Product of the Social Interactions That Occur Within It
Summary:
Cities are like social reactors, where human interactions lead to various outcomes.
The sublinear behavior in infrastructure is due to increased population or area. This interaction also results in superlinear effects like crime, innovation, and epidemics.
Cities squeeze us in, making it easier to interact.
This creates a cycle where sustained socioeconomic interaction accelerates over time.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
But as we poked at it more, it wasn't. It was more to do with infrastructure of cities. And so, this became a little bit the puzzle for me and for all of us to try to understand if this pattern was consistent and then how to explain it, which, in the end, is very simple. At the beginning, obviously, it's always not obvious. So, the fact that we have sublinear behavior in terms of infrastructure and built-up spaces means that there are more people or area, right? And so, the interpretation was that all these superlinear things are the product of human interactions that produce socially, whether it's crime or wages or forms of innovation or Many, many other contexts, almost anything that we do together, epidemics or kinds of things. But then the other effect is just squeezing us in. So, you could see immediately that what's happening is that if we're more squeezed in, it's easier to interact. So, the two effects are essentially related by that. The cities, I came to talk about this in terms of calling cities a social reactor, a reactor. And I can explain why. But basically, that they bring us together in just such a way that they also increase the rates of sustained socioeconomic interaction, and then all these products accelerate per Unit time.)
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(highlight:: The Trade-Off Between Social Interactions and Problems in Urban Areas
Transcript:
Speaker 2
So does that mean that we put people together, we get all these social interactions, we get the super linear behavior, so we get, you know, more creativity, but we also get more crime And more disease problems was we're all squashed together. And then it's the infrastructure piece of that, the sublinear piece. Is that trying to mitigate the problems that the super linear piece is producing? Is that one way to think about that?
Speaker 1
To some extent, I mean, what is required is that you can actually do the math for this, and it's done in my book and some of the papers, is that you can imagine a city without roads, right, And just building a scatter of around and without all the rest of the infrastructure. If you do it that way, you can still have some of these effects, but it gets very crowded, very disorganized very quickly. So at some point it tends to jam to just not work, right? So what you see in every city then, that changes the certain sizes, that it does develop a street network and public spaces and all this stuff.)
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(highlight:: A Cities Networks Increase Volume In Volume Than In Area, Forcing 3D Infrastructure
Summary:
Cities need infrastructure like roads and networks to function efficiently, but they can't just be built anywhere.
As cities grow, they develop a hierarchy of infrastructure, from local roads to highways and subway systems. However, as cities become denser, the infrastructure takes up more space and needs to be placed in the third dimension.
This includes roads, electrical cables, fiber, and pipes for water and sanitation.
These networks grow in volume faster than the underlying space, leading to crowded and disorganized cities if not properly planned.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
Is that trying to mitigate the problems that the super linear piece is producing? Is that one way to think about that?
Speaker 1
To some extent, I mean, what is required is that you can actually do the math for this, and it's done in my book and some of the papers, is that you can imagine a city without roads, right, And just building a scatter of around and without all the rest of the infrastructure. If you do it that way, you can still have some of these effects, but it gets very crowded, very disorganized very quickly. So at some point it tends to jam to just not work, right? So what you see in every city then, that changes the certain sizes, that it does develop a street network and public spaces and all this stuff. And then as it gets to more modern, bigger cities, then we start having a hierarchy with these infrastructures, not just local roads, but main roads, and then highways and then subway Systems. There are a couple of things that sublinear, but not with the same exponents. So one is the total area that the city occupies by all the built stuff. But then there's the networks of the city, the network of roads, the network of electrical cables of fiber now, of pipes that carry water and sanitation. And those networks actually grow in volume a little faster than the underlying space. And that, for example, means that as cities get denser, particularly in central parts where they are, tend to be a load denser, they take over space. So you need to kind of stop putting them in the third dimension. You either put them usually on the ground, but sometimes with cables and so on, over ground.)
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(highlight:: Walking speed and the importance of public transit efficiency in cities
Summary:
Walking speed data shows that people walk faster in larger cities, which can be explained by the value of time and energy efficiency.
The argument suggests that transportation systems should be designed to minimize dead time and prioritize efficient travel. However, many cities fail to prioritize this, resulting in frustration and people opting for less efficient means of transportation.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
And so we found this data on walking speed, and it was very amusing, how it was measured, and so on. But it was fascinating, so people walk a little faster in larger cities. They actually sort of two possible explanations, the measurements are not consistent with both, so it's sort of a superliny effect, but one would be simply to say that the value of time, Right? So this is a more economics argument that the value of time is superlinear. So your dead time walking from A to B should be reduced by that amount, so therefore you have to walk faster. The other one would be more on the energy that it takes to walk, and so the energy should be superlinear, and so the velocity is V squared, so it's only the square root of that. So it could be the temporal dimension, it could be the energy, and both are compatible with what is measured, at least I know, but in any case, it's almost an efficiency of behavior argument That you kind of want to be doing the things that matter, and you want to minimize the time in between. It's interesting as an argument too, because I think this is something, for example, you asked about things about the way we plan, and this means that if you, you should take the argument Seriously, because we observe it, but you should plan, for example, transportation systems in cities that minimize that dead time as well, which we don't do very well. In principle, a subway right goes faster for A to B, or a highway goes faster for A to B, and you get those in logisticities, but not in smaller cities, but that should almost be the primary Dimension of performance for a transit system that it doesn't waste people's time, and that allows them to go from A to B, and so on, on a smaller time than compatible with acceleration Of behavior, and we don't do that. So one of the frustrating features that anyone who lives in a large city with crumbling infrastructure knows about is that often transit does not, is not engineered, it's not planned To respect people's time in that sense, and that means that people that have a choice sometimes on that reason alone, and the others, do not take these means that actually could save Energy and be more sustainable.)
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(highlight:: Human-Centered Development: Strengthening Networks in Slums Through Improved Infrastructur
Summary:
The key to addressing the complicated problem of delivering physical networks is to avoid forcibly displacing people from their social networks and livelihoods.
Instead, it is more effective to develop street networks, address systems, and establish rights and obligations for land use. This approach not only regularizes the city but also creates an organic extension that upgrades the conditions of the people and delivers modern functions.
Additionally, organic urban fabrics are more beautiful and desirable in the long run, attracting people and becoming ideal spaces for social life.
By constructing environments in an organic way that responds to people's needs and the growth of cities, we can create lasting and meaningful urban environments that preserve people's histories and struggles while fostering a better future.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
And do you have an example of something that's being done that is really working well in that space?
Speaker 1
Yeah so you know it's a complicated problem because also delivering physical networks is slow. The great transformation has been from and this is sort of now endorsed by many policy agencies and development agencies including UN agencies but increasingly also the World Bank And so on is the idea that you shouldn't just race lums and move people to social housing or some other housing which tends to you know in terms of housing sometimes better than living Conditions but in terms of the socio-economic organization of life typically much worse because people lose their often very necessary and fragile social networks and livelihoods And so on. You know it's a violent transformation from that point of view. So the big transformation has been to not do that and at least whenever possible to do what I was implying and what we're implying in that conversation which is to deliver the infrastructure In place to develop street networks to create address systems, to create you know rights and obligations of using that land and therefore essentially to regularize the city but also To create the kind of extension of the city that's more organic right that's not just an urban plan that is just rolled out but something that actually upgrades is the term that's usually Used. They're currently in conditions of people but they're also in place as much as possible in Cito but then deliver modern functions right. So there's a third reason to this that maybe it's less about people. It is ultimately about people but it has to do with the fact that urban fabrics that evolve in this more organic way and so on are much more beautiful, much more desirable down the line. So if you think you know we were talking comparing our experience of cities in Europe where it's in Europe, or in Asia, or Latin America, places that have all bits of cities right. Once they have services and their pleasant places to be and to live what you find is that they're very attractive. People want to be there right, they're quaint, they have history, they're symbolic, they have culture and that's the kind of place they have a human scale and so those places become Sometimes the most expensive and most desirable ones or ideal spaces for social life in other cases. So we don't know how to do that using industrial means doing urban planning and what we end up constructing in these other ways ends up being destroyed or demolished because it's not Desirable and doesn't last. So we'd be better off actually if we built these environments in an organic way that responds to the needs of people and to the growth of cities but also creates better quality ultimately Urban environments that can last and don't erase people's histories and people's struggles but actually I guess ultimately channel them into the future. We'll also celebrate a little bit the struggle but also the transcendence perhaps that's possible in cities.)
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