Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

We as primates are one of those. For instance, we take longer to mature than we “should” given our body weight. This is the result of our rapid evolution from being purely biological to becoming sophisticated socioeconomic creatures. Our effective metabolic rate is now one hundred times greater than what it was when we were truly “biological” animals, and this has had huge consequences for our recent life history. We take longer to mature, we have fewer offspring, and we live longer, all in qualitative agreement with having an effectively larger metabolic rate arising from socioeconomic activity. I shall return to this fascinating development in our history when discussing how these ideas apply to cities.