Urban Scaling and Its Deviations: Revealing the Structure of Wealth, Innovation and Crime across Cities

With urban population increasing dramatically worldwide, cities are playing an increasingly critical role in human societies and the sustainability of the planet. An obstacle to effective policy is the lack of meaningful urban metrics based on a quantitative understanding of cities. Typically, linear per capita indicators are used to characterize and rank cities. However, these implicitly ignore the fundamental role of nonlinear agglomeration integral to the life history of cities. As such, per capita indicators conflate general nonlinear effects, common to all cities, with local dynamics, specific to each city, failing to provide direct measures of the impact of local events and policy. Agglomeration…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: PHY 0202180, 0202180
• RF
  Rockefeller Foundation
• JS
  James S. McDonnell Foundation
• DO
  Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems
• LD
  Laboratory Directed Research and Development
• LA
  Los Alamos National Laboratory