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

by Geoffrey West

Metropolitan Oklahoma City, with a population of about 1.2 million people, has a GDP of about $60 billion, so its per capita GDP ($60 billion divided by 1.2 million) is indeed close to the average for the United States, namely $50,000. Extrapolating this to a city with a population ten times larger, having 12 million people, would predict its GDP to be $600 billion (obtained by multiplying the $50,000 per capita by the 12 million people), ten times larger than Oklahoma City. However, metropolitan Los Angeles, which is indeed ten times larger than Oklahoma City with 12 million inhabitants, has a GDP that is actually more than $700 billion, which is more than 15 percent larger than the “predicted” value obtained by the linear extrapolation implicit in using a per capita measure.