A "New York minute," slang for "a very short time," refers to the common feeling that life is faster in big cities. This perception was recently borne out in studies that show how urban indicators, which include "social currencies" such as wealth creation, innovation, and information, but also crime rates and how fast people walk, vary with urban population size.

Using data from hundreds of cities worldwide, a team of researchers, including two Los Alamos theorists, observed that social currencies increase per capita with population, while material infrastructure (the size of the energy grid, transportation network, etc.) grows more slowly than population. These findings apply to all urban systems studied, from the U.S. to China.

The scientists also introduced a new "urban growth equation" that relates urban population to the availability of resources and their consumption. The equation shows that, as populations grow, social life accelerates because a number of more contacts become possible between people.

Furthermore, the scientists observed that when urban development is driven by social interactions, the relative growth rate steadily increases, which leads inexorably to crises. Sustainable growth can nevertheless be achieved through periodic resetting of the growth trajectory via major adaptations, leading to successive growth cycles. Historically in the U.S., such adaptations have resulted from shifts in immigration, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the result of urban interventions.

The study's conclusions-that cities are predictable accelerators of social life and that the rate of urban population growth periodically undergoes abrupt changes, which must occur more often as the city's population increases-are confirmed by the analysis of New York City's historic growth. Such insights could help guide new policies on sustainable development in a world that is becoming predominantly urbanized.


Posted by: Ethen    Source

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