Modeling the Polycentric Transition of Cities
Abstract
Empirical evidence suggests that most urban systems experience a transition from a monocentric to a polycentric organization as they grow and expand. We propose here a stochastic, out-of-equilibrium model of the city, which explains the appearance of subcenters as an effect of traffic congestion. We show that congestion triggers the instability of the monocentric regime and that the number of subcenters and the total commuting distance within a city scale sublinearly with its population, predictions that are in agreement with data gathered for around 9000 U.S. cities between 1994 and 2010.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- November 2013
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.198702
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1309.3961
- Bibcode:
- 2013PhRvL.111s8702L
- Keywords:
-
- 89.65.Lm;
- 05.10.Gg;
- 89.75.Fb;
- 89.75.Hc;
- Urban planning and construction;
- Stochastic analysis methods;
- Structures and organization in complex systems;
- Networks and genealogical trees;
- Physics - Physics and Society;
- Condensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks
- E-Print:
- 11 pages, 12 figures