Constructing cities, deconstructing scaling laws

TL;DR

This paper questions the universality of scaling laws in urban measures by analyzing various city definitions and indicators, revealing that most indicators scale linearly with city size and challenging previous assumptions.

Contribution

It develops a framework for defining cities and systematically tests the validity of scaling laws across different urban boundaries and indicators.

Findings

Most urban indicators scale linearly with city size.

Expected non-linear scaling laws are not consistently supported.

Scaling exponents fluctuate when non-linear correlations are observed.

Abstract

Cities can be characterised and modelled through different urban measures. Consistency within these observables is crucial in order to advance towards a science of cities. Bettencourt et al have proposed that many of these urban measures can be predicted through universal scaling laws. We develop a framework to consistently define cities, using commuting to work and population density thresholds, and construct thousands of realisations of systems of cities with different boundaries for England and Wales. These serve as a laboratory for the scaling analysis of a large set of urban indicators. The analysis shows that population size alone does not provide enough information to describe or predict the state of a city as previously proposed, indicating that the expected scaling laws are not corroborated. We found that most urban indicators scale linearly with city size regardless of the definition of the urban boundaries. However, when non-linear correlations are present, the exponent fluctuates considerably.