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

by Geoffrey West

To put it in simple terms, scaling implies that if a city is twice the size of another city in the same country (whether 40,000 vs. 20,000 or 4 million vs. 2 million), then its wages, wealth, number of patents, AIDS cases, violent crime, and educational institutions all increase by approximately the same degree (by about 15 percent above mere doubling), with similar savings in all of its infrastructure. The bigger the city, the more the average individual systematically owns, produces, and consumes, whether goods, resources, or ideas. The good, the bad, and the ugly are integrated in an approximately predictable package: a person may move to a bigger city drawn by more innovation, a greater sense of “action,” and higher wages, but she can also expect to confront an equivalent increase in the prevalence of crime and disease.