Scaling in Human Societies


How and Why Size Matters
  • Cities and Pollution

    By Michael Goff
    There is no blanket statement that can be made about how pollution varies with city size, since “pollution” is broad phenomenon, and different kinds of pollution operate according to different dynamics. We will consider several kinds of pollution and see how their behavior with respect to city size varies considerably.... [Read More]
  • Interaction Across Cities

    By Michael Goff
    In our analysis of scaling effects in cities, we review the model of Bettencourt (2013), which holds that socioeconomic quantities such as per-capita gross domestic product of a city increase with the 1/6 power of the city’s population. However, most empirical results we examine in that same article find weaker... [Read More]