A provocative new article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that the pace of urban life speeds up exponentially in relation to population growth. With over half the world's population now living in cities, researcher Luis Bettencourt and colleagues decided to use mathematical models to chart how several unexpected aspects of city life will get faster, bigger, and more expansive in coming years. Using statistics gathered over the past century from dozens of cities, Bettencourt and Co. showed that everything from walking speeds and gas consumption, to wealth and the number of R & D jobs grows exponentially in relation to the population.
What that means is if your population is growing at rate n, then walking speeds and wealth will grow faster by n-squared. That's a fairly startling trend, and suggests that the growth of urbanism could spark a boom in creativity and innovation. And really muscular legs. Or, suggests Bettencourt, it could mean that society will collapse because our infrastructure and basic resources like fuel are unable to sustain what's required to maintain that exponential growth rate in wealth -- and speed walkers wolfing down protein bars.
Growth, Innovation, Scaling and the Pace of Life in Cities [via PNAS]
