On the Meaning of Urban Scaling (opens in new tab)

arXiv:2603.30021v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Cities are often compared through scaling laws, usually expressed as power-law relations between population size and aggregate urban quantities related to infrastructure, socioeconomic activity, or environmental impacts. These laws are influential because their exponent is often interpreted as describing what happens when a city grows, with implications for urban theory, planning, and policy. Here, we show that this interpretation is g...