The DOI matches its Crossref record; 2 of the 2 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Size, Scale, and Shape of Cities
Abstract
Despite a century of effort, our understanding of how cities evolve is still woefully inadequate. Recent research, however, suggests that cities are complex systems that mainly grow from the bottom up, their size and shape following well-defined scaling laws that result from intense competition for space. An integrated theory of how cities evolve, linking urban economics and transportation behavior to developments in network science, allometric growth, and fractal geometry, is being slowly developed. This science provides new insights into the resource limits facing cities in terms of the meaning of density, compactness, and sprawl, and related questions of sustainability. It has the potential to enrich current approaches to city planning and replace traditional top-down strategies with realistic city plans that benefit all city dwellers.
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Citations
Cites
The Spatial Economy: Cities, Regions, and International Trade
Fujita, M., Krugman, P., & Venables, A. J. (1999) · doi:10.7551/mitpress/6389.001.0001 · Cited by 4,788 · cited 1×
“As yet, there are no integrated theories tying these ideas together in an economic framework consistent with physical scaling, although progress is being made (18).”
BackgroundThe Fourth Dimension of Life: Fractal Geometry and Allometric Scaling of Organisms
West, G. B., Brown, J. H., & Enquist, B. J. (1999) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.284.5420.1677 · Cited by 1,718
Cited by
A unified theory of urban living
Bettencourt, L., & West, G. (2010) · Nature · doi:10.1038/467912a · Cited by 1,009
Sumpter, D. J. T. (2010) · doi:10.1515/9781400837106 · Cited by 914
Advancing Urban Ecology toward a Science of Cities
McPhearson, T., Pickett, S. T. A., Grimm, N. B., Niemelä, J., Alberti, M., Elmqvist, T., Weber, C., Haase, D., Breuste, J., & Qureshi, S. (2016) · BioScience · doi:10.1093/biosci/biw002 · Cited by 731
Bettencourt, L. M. A., Lobo, J., Strumsky, D., & West, G. B. (2010) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013541 · Cited by 651
Global typology of urban energy use and potentials for an urbanization mitigation wedge
Creutzig, F., Baiocchi, G., Bierkandt, R., Pichler, P.-P., & Seto, K. C. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1315545112 · Cited by 598
Breaking new ground in mapping human settlements from space – The Global Urban Footprint
Esch, T., Heldens, W., Hirner, A., Keil, M., Marconcini, M., Roth, A., Zeidler, J., Dech, S., & Strano, E. (2017) · ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing · doi:10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2017.10.012 · Cited by 403
Elementary processes governing the evolution of road networks
Strano, E., Nicosia, V., Latora, V., Porta, S., & Barthélemy, M. (2012) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/srep00296 · Cited by 321
FORUM: Sharing or sparing? How should we grow the world's cities?
Lin, B. B., & Fuller, R. A. (2013) · Journal of Applied Ecology · doi:10.1111/1365-2664.12118 · Cited by 197
Upscaling urban data science for global climate solutions
Creutzig, F., Lohrey, S., Bai, X., Baklanov, A., Dawson, R., Dhakal, S., Lamb, W. F., McPhearson, T., Minx, J., Munoz, E., et al. (2019) · Global Sustainability · doi:10.1017/sus.2018.16 · Cited by 137
Kukkonen, M. O., Muhammad, M. J., Käyhkö, N., & Luoto, M. (2018) · Land Use Policy · doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.11.007 · Cited by 46
Administrative boundaries and urban areas in Italy: A perspective from scaling laws
Alvioli, M. (2020) · Landscape and Urban Planning · doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103906 · Cited by 34
Positioning aesthetic landscape as economy
Barrett, T. L., Farina, A., & Barrett, G. W. (2009) · Landscape Ecology · doi:10.1007/s10980-009-9326-z · Cited by 21
Scaling Behavior of Public Procurement Activity
Curado, A., Damásio, B., Encarnação, S., Candia, C., & Pinheiro, F. L. (2021) · PLOS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260806 · Cited by 12
Paths to Diversity: A Simulation of Conformity in Environments with Different Geometries
Cohen, M., & Colombo, M. (2025) · Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy · doi:10.3998/ergo.8584
“In philosophy (Rietveld & Brouwers 2017), psychology (Gibson 1979), ecology (Dale & Fortin 2014), and urban planning (Batty 2008), geometrical features of the environment have been shown to shape dwellers’ behavior at multiple spatial and temporal scales, which is consistent with the spatial…”
Metadata
- Authors
- Batty, M.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2008-02-08
- Volume
- 319
- Issue
- 5864
- Pages
- 769-771
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W1974395471
- Cited by
- 1,420
- References
- 2
- FWCI
- 98.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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