PM 55: The 20 Laws of Cities.
Hello!
In our obsession with cities, especially how we build them to become more sustainable and equitable for the growing urban population, Reza and I have read and reviewed dozens of some of the most important research, books, and analyses of this fascinating organism. Off the back of these reviews, we’ve extracted 20 laws of Cities. 20 laws that offer us a template for the things we have to bear in mind as we build the future. We’ve digested work from thinkers and practitioners including Geoffrey West and Jane Goodall.
We’ve borrowed ideas from Luis Bettencourt, Richard Florida, and Donella Meadows. We’ve pondered the thinking of Nicola Dempsey and Edward Glaeser/Hedi Kallal. We’ve wrapped all these ideas in our perspective having worked in utilities (power and water), renewables, construction, and cities for the last couple decades of our careers. Based on all these, here are the 20 Laws of (Thriving and Sustainable) Cities.
These laws are interrelated and connected. We are talking about systems and, consequently, no one law stands above the others but they work together to ensure that the best cities are built for the people.
Our most recent episode of Future Forward (listen on Spotify, Apple, and all other podcast platforms) also covers The 20 Laws of (Thriving and Sustainable) Cities.
Urban Scaling Predicts City Performance: This law posits that as cities grow, they exhibit predictable scaling relationships across socioeconomic and infrastructural indicators. The research backing up this law is from the work of Geoffrey West and Bettencourt et al. (2007) where they demonstrated that various urban indicators scale with population size following power laws. A power law is a type of relationship where one thing changes by a fixed factor whenever another thing changes by a certain amount, often seen in situations where big events or values are much less common than smaller ones. Like how there are a few very tall mountains but many more small hills. In city terms, a few cities are really big with lots of people and there are many more smaller towns with fewer people, following some mathematical relationships. Failing to account for the scaling (power) law in city planning or decision-making can lead to inefficient resource allocation and missed opportunities for economic growth. New York City has leveraged its size to become a global hub of innovation and economic activity, with patents and GDP growing superlinearly with population. This behavior can be predicted by urban scaling laws (Bettencourt et al., 2007).
Urban Density Drives Efficiency: This law simply suggests that higher urban density, when thoughtfully planned, can lead to more efficient use of resources, reduced carbon emissions, and improved quality of life in a city. This law is based on work by Newman and Kenworthy (1989) ‘Gasoline Consumption and Cities Revisited (What Have We Learnt?) where the authors established the relationship between urban density and energy consumption. The inefficiencies we see as a result of urban sprawl in many suburbs of the US is the best example of the flouting of this law. Low-density urban sprawl results in increased infrastructure costs, higher energy consumption, and greater environmental impact. As shown in the research, the city of Atlanta, USA, with its low-density sprawl, consumes significantly more energy per capita than denser cities like Barcelona, Spain, despite having similar populations (Newman and Kenworthy, 1999).
Have a great month!
Seyi