Urban scaling laws arise from within-city inequalities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4616613 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin Arvidsson (0000-0003-4648-2829, Linköping University, corresponding author), Niclas Lovsjö (0000-0002-7460-5665, Linköping University, corresponding author), M Keuschnigg (0000-0001-5774-1553, Linköping University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 365-374 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-26 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Nature Human Behaviour (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2397-3374 • E-ISSN: 2397-3374 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1038/s41562-022-01509-1 |
| PMID | 36702938 |
| OpenAlex | W4318071583 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 27 |
| References cited | 51 |
Theories of urban scaling have demonstrated remarkable predictive accuracy at aggregate levels. However, they have overlooked the stark inequalities that exist within cities. Human networking and productivity exhibit heavy-tailed distributions, with some individuals contributing disproportionately to city totals. Here we use micro-level data from Europe and the United States on interconnectivity, productivity and innovation in cities. We find that the tails of within-city distributions and their growth by city size account for 36-80% of previously reported scaling effects, and 56-87% of the variance in scaling between indicators of varying economic complexity. Providing explanatory depth to these findings, we identify a mechanism-city size-dependent cumulative advantage-that constitutes an important channel through which differences in the size of tails emerge. Our findings demonstrate that urban scaling is in large part a story about inequality in cities, implying that the causal processes underlying the heavier tails in larger cities must be considered in explanations of urban scaling. This result also shows that agglomeration effects benefit urban elites the most, with the majority of city dwellers partially excluded from the socio-economic benefits of growing cities
Geometry · Inequality · Mathematical analysis · Political science · Scaling · Scaling law · Sociology · Law · Mathematics · Regional Economics and Spatial Analysis · Spatial and Panel Data Analysis · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
Evaluating inequality divides in urban development intensity between the Global North and South
Scaling innovation
Validating urban scaling laws through mobile phone data
Research on the impact of China’s reform to delegate power, streamline administration, and optimize government services on the technology innovation efficiency of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry
Intra-settlement scaling across the urban–rural continuum
The association between suitable compactness of urban expansion and urban green growth
Who you are versus where you are
Scaling of urban environmental performance in Chinese cities
Beyond open science
Unpacking urban scaling and socio-spatial inequalities in mobility
Generative models of scale-invariant systems of cities
The allometry of housing prices in urban scaling laws and an equalised dwellers’ utility across settlement sizes
Residential mobility and new forms of spatial inequality in the settlement system
Hopes and dreams for (future) better things
Scaling law in a stable urban system of Japan
Quantifying contributions of geographical features to urban GDP outputs via interpretable machine learning
The Catalogue of Mechanisms in Analytical Sociology
Urban scaling and diffusion of knowledge recombination in Chinese cities, 1991–2020
The Double-Edged Effect of Urban Agglomeration on Regional Inequality
Accumulation of psychological problems in UK cities; A quantile regression approach
A typology of energy scaling in Chinese cities and its implication for sustainable urban transitions
Urban scaling of well-being for cities in the Netherlands, the urban centre versus the functional urban area
Analyzing passenger route evenness
Tracing the flow of money to reveal spatial effects and inequalities in cash transfer programmes
Unequal partnerships
Understanding the metabolism and scaling law in construction projects
Using Zipf's Law to Optimize Urban Spatial Layouts in an Urban Agglomeration Area
Cumulative advantage
A unified theory of urban living
Settlement scaling and increasing returns in an ancient society
The Origins of Scaling in Cities
Urban Scaling and Its Deviations
Learning by Working in Big Cities
Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf's law
Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities
Cities and Skills
Power-Law Distributions in Empirical Data
The Magnitude and Causes of Agglomeration Economies
Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks
The Creative Class Paradigm
Global Inequality Dynamics
The Productivity Advantages of Large Cities
The knowledge spillover theory of intrapreneurship
Cumulative Advantage as a Mechanism for Inequality
On the mechanics of migration decisions
Spatial Sorting
Explaining the prevalence, scaling and variance of urban phenomena
Complex economic activities concentrate in large cities
Dynamics of Dyads in Social Networks
Toward a Subcultural Theory of Urbanism
Urbanism as a Way of Life
Third parties and status position
| Unique citing works | 27 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 9 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 26 |