Urban Scale Theory

The two entry points chosen for the study of urban scale theory are very unique: the size of cities and the metabolism of cities. We know that as the population of a city increases, a series of indicators such as the infrastructure, economic activity, number of crimes and even the number of patients in the city will also change. We can therefore measure size in terms of the number of people in the city and metabolism in terms of a range of metrics in the city, so that the law of scale can be used to predict what the city will look like as it expands. We call power less than 1 scale scaling sublinear scale scaling and power greater than 1 scale scaling superlinear scale scaling. These power-law relationships, whether sublinear or superlinear, are the scale laws for cities.

Edited and translated by Zhang Yifei