Abstract
Recent advances in the urban science make broad use of the notion of scaling. We focus here on the important scaling relationship between the gross metropolitan product (GMP) of a city and its population (pop). It has been demonstrated that GMP ∝ Y Ypopβ with β always greater than 1 and close to 1.2. This fundamental finding highlights a universal rule that holds across countries and cultures and might explain the very nature of cities. However, in an increasingly connected world, the hypothesis that the economy of a city solely depends on its population might be questionable. Using data for 248 cities in the European Union between 2005 and 2010, we found a double GMP/pop scaling regime. For West EU cities, β = 1 over the whole the period, while for post-communist cities β > 1 and increases from ∼1.2 to ∼1.4. The evolution of the scaling exponent describes the convergence of post-communist European cities to open and liberal economies. We propose a simple model of economic convergence in which, under stable political conditions, a linear GMP/pop scaling is expected for all cities. The results suggest that the GMP/pop super-linear scaling represents a phase of economic growth rather than a steady, universal urban feature. The results also suggest that relationships between cities are embedded in their political and economic context and cannot be neglected in explanations of cities, urbanization and urban economics.
Highlights
The hypothesis of urban scaling is certainly a pillar of quantitative methods for understanding cities [1]
We propose a simple model of economic convergence in which, under stable political conditions, a linear gross metropolitan product (GMP)/pop scaling is expected for all cities
We focus on the scaling laws that regulate the economic output of a city, or gross metropolitan product (GMP), in relation to its population
Summary
The hypothesis of urban scaling is certainly a pillar of quantitative methods for understanding cities [1]. We focus on the scaling laws that regulate the economic output of a city, or gross metropolitan product (GMP), in relation to its population (pop). Any geographically extended social entity’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to be independent of its population After all, this is the mean economic output of the people living in that city, village or metropolis. Perhaps more important, questions related to the increasing urbanization rates of persistently poor, non-industrialized countries are raised by recent studies [16, 17] This observation is not consistent with the assumption that urban economic growth is determined solely by its citizens’ interactions within urban limits. Some natural questions arise when cities are not considered as closed and independent systems: Why, given the same rate of urbanization, does Asia contain a number of the most explosive economies while sub-Saharan Africa has seen very little growth? How can we explain the stagnant economic conditions of a metropolis such as Dhaka? What is the meaning of urban scaling in rapidly growing emerging economies? is it true that all cities, regardless of their economic environments and histories, are variations on a theme?
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