Scaling in Human Societies

There are thousands of cities in the world, each with its unique history. There are, nevertheless, regularities in how cities grow, which can be captured in the monocentric standard urban model (SUM). The SUM is also known as the Alonso-Muth-Mills model, named after a trio of works from the 1960s:... [Read More]

As has been the case historically, we should expect that emerging transportation technology will transform cities. [Read More]

Several urban design methodologies are suggested to reduce the amount of automobile traffic in cities. These proposals have significant environmental, health, and eonomic implications, with the latter not generally well understood. [Read More]

“Polycentricity” refers to an urban design pattern in which there are several separate centers of employment and commerce, and not a single dominant center. The monocentric standard urban model, also known as the Alonso-Muth-Mills model, holds that cities development around a single core, known as the central business district. Although... [Read More]

How does the functioning of a business change as it grows? What factors determine the sizes of businesses that we see today? There are two theoretical extremes for the distribution of business sizes. One is that all businesses are sole proprietorships, which might arise if there were no advantage to... [Read More]