Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Urban outputs often scale superlinearly with city population. A difficulty in understanding the mechanism of this phenomenon is that different outputs differ considerably in their scaling behaviors. Here, we formulate a physics-based model for the origin of superlinear scaling in urban outputs by treating human interaction as a random process. Our model suggests that the increased likelihood of finding required collaborations in a larger population can explain this superlinear scaling, which our model predicts to be non-power-law. Moreover, the extent of superlinearity should be greater for activities that require more collaborators. We test this model using a novel dataset for seven crime types and find strong support.
Source: Physical review. E
Institutions: Northwestern University, Santa Fe Institute
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: James S. McDonnell Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W2973994101