To Scale or not to Scale?

After our discussion, here's some additional papers to take a look at:

Pan, W., Ghoshal, G., Krumme, C., Cebrian, M. & Pentland, A. Urban characteristics attributable to density-driven tie formation. Nature Communications 4, (2013).

This paper proposes a driving mechanism for, as well as a slightly different version of, the scaling laws.

Schläpfer, M. et al. The Scaling of Human Interactions with City Size. arXiv preprint 1210.5215, (2012).

This paper examines the ways in which human interactions (network formation) is influenced by city-size.

Bettencourt, L. M. A., Lobo, J., Strumsky, D. & West, G. B. Urban scaling and its deviations: revealing the structure of wealth, innovation and crime across cities. PloS one 5, e13541 (2010).

This paper introduces the Scale-Adjusted Metropolitan Indicators (SAMI), and proposes their use as a way of comparing cities through the three characteristics in the title.  Probably the most interesting Bettencourt paper in terms of applied work.

Also of interest might be this working paper, in which Bettencourt lays out his idea of what the emerging science of cities looks like:

Bettencourt, L. M. A. The Kind of Problem a City Is. 1–14 (2013).

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