Superlinear Urban Growth
The researchers base their findings on data on the growth of cities in the U.S., Europe and China over the past 150 years. They measured cities consumption of resources (such as water usage) and requirements for infrastructure (roads, transportation, lengths of electrical cable), and then measured the creative output of these areas (patents issued, “super creative jobs” generated, R&D employment, total wages).
As the city grew in population it required less energy (resources) to sustain it in a proportion called sublinear scaling. When they measured creative output (jobs, wealth generated, innovation) as cities grew, the scaling of this output was superlinear, meaning as the city grew its creative output grew faster and faster.
“It isn’t like if you double the size of a city you double its creative output,” Lobo said. “The increase you get in wealth creation is greater than the increase in size of the city.”
That ratio can range from 1.1:1 when measuring the gross domestic product in Germany, to 1.3:1 when measuring private R&D employment in the U.S.
Today a little more than half of the world’s population live in large urban areas. By 2030, it is estimated that two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in urban areas.
Lobo: “Policies should be directed to making large cities more livable not making them smaller.”
“Researchers find ‘large is smart’ when it comes to cities,” PhysOrg.com