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

by Geoffrey West

This surprising observation of the approximately one-hour invariant that communal human beings have spent traveling each day, whether they lived in ancient Rome, a medieval town, a Greek village, or twentieth-century New York, has become known as Marchetti’s constant, even though it was originally discovered by Zahavi. As a rough guide it clearly has important implications for the design and structure of cities. As planners begin to design green carless communities and as more cities ban automobiles from their centers, understanding and implementing the implied constraints of Marchetti’s constant becomes an important consideration for maintaining the functionality of the city.

I wonder how scooters play a role in this