About The Project
This project is Scaling in Human Societies, a Living Literature Review of topics related to how cities, nations, and civilization as a whole develop with size. Our goal is to present research broadly related to scaling in a way that is comprehensive, up-to-date, understandable to a layperson, and relevant to researchers and policymakers.
This project has a companion blog at Substack.
Funding
This project is generously supported by a Living Literature Review grant from Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy). Coefficient Giving does not exercise editorial control over this project, and no content here should be construed as representing Coefficient Giving’s views.
About Me
Michael Goff is an independent researcher focused on scaling relationships in human societies, with particular interest in how cities grow, how large-scale cooperation emerges, and what these dynamics imply for long-term human welfare. He leads the Scaling in Human Societies project, a living literature review supported by Coefficient Giving, which synthesizes research on urban economics, population dynamics, and the mechanisms underlying economic growth.
Michael also leads Urban Cruise Ship, a research consultancy producing analysis on energy, climate change, land use, urban design, and waste management. His work there has informed philanthropic strategy and policy advocacy, including an analysis of solid waste disposal costs for the Tennessee Environmental Council and a study of the drivers of electrification using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Previously, Michael was an energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, where he published quantitative research on housing supply and urban policy and secured funding to launch a cities research program. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Washington and conducted postdoctoral research at Vanderbilt University. Across his graduate and postdoctoral work, he published nine peer-reviewed papers in graph theory and combinatorics.
His research draws on quantitative methods and uses tools including R, Python, and SQL, and it engages with questions at the intersection of economic growth, environmental sustainability, and long-run human welfare — areas central to the effective altruism research agenda.