IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0134862.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scale-Adjusted Metrics for Predicting the Evolution of Urban Indicators and Quantifying the Performance of Cities

Author

Listed:
  • Luiz G A Alves
  • Renio S Mendes
  • Ervin K Lenzi
  • Haroldo V Ribeiro

Abstract

More than a half of world population is now living in cities and this number is expected to be two-thirds by 2050. Fostered by the relevancy of a scientific characterization of cities and for the availability of an unprecedented amount of data, academics have recently immersed in this topic and one of the most striking and universal finding was the discovery of robust allometric scaling laws between several urban indicators and the population size. Despite that, most governmental reports and several academic works still ignore these nonlinearities by often analyzing the raw or the per capita value of urban indicators, a practice that actually makes the urban metrics biased towards small or large cities depending on whether we have super or sublinear allometries. By following the ideas of Bettencourt et al. [PLoS ONE 5 (2010) e13541], we account for this bias by evaluating the difference between the actual value of an urban indicator and the value expected by the allometry with the population size. We show that this scale-adjusted metric provides a more appropriate/informative summary of the evolution of urban indicators and reveals patterns that do not appear in the evolution of per capita values of indicators obtained from Brazilian cities. We also show that these scale-adjusted metrics are strongly correlated with their past values by a linear correspondence and that they also display crosscorrelations among themselves. Simple linear models account for 31%–97% of the observed variance in data and correctly reproduce the average of the scale-adjusted metric when grouping the cities in above and below the allometric laws. We further employ these models to forecast future values of urban indicators and, by visualizing the predicted changes, we verify the emergence of spatial clusters characterized by regions of the Brazilian territory where we expect an increase or a decrease in the values of urban indicators.

Suggested Citation

  • Luiz G A Alves & Renio S Mendes & Ervin K Lenzi & Haroldo V Ribeiro, 2015. "Scale-Adjusted Metrics for Predicting the Evolution of Urban Indicators and Quantifying the Performance of Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-17, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0134862
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134862
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134862
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134862&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0134862?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rémi Louf & Camille Roth & Marc Barthelemy, 2014. "Scaling in Transportation Networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-8, July.
    2. Samaniego, Horacio & Moses, Melanie E., 2008. "Cities as Organisms: Allometric Scaling of Urban Road Networks," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 1(1), pages 21-39.
    3. Luiz G A Alves & Haroldo V Ribeiro & Ervin K Lenzi & Renio S Mendes, 2013. "Distance to the Scaling Law: A Useful Approach for Unveiling Relationships between Crime and Urban Metrics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-8, August.
    4. Boris Podobnik & Davor Horvatic & Dror Y. Kenett & H. Eugene Stanley, 2012. "The competitiveness versus the wealth of a country," Papers 1209.2813, arXiv.org.
    5. Alves, L.G.A. & Ribeiro, H.V. & Lenzi, E.K. & Mendes, R.S., 2014. "Empirical analysis on the connection between power-law distributions and allometries for urban indicators," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 409(C), pages 175-182.
    6. Luis Bettencourt & Geoffrey West, 2010. "A unified theory of urban living," Nature, Nature, vol. 467(7318), pages 912-913, October.
    7. José Lobo & Luís M A Bettencourt & Deborah Strumsky & Geoffrey B West, 2013. "Urban Scaling and the Production Function for Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(3), pages 1-10, March.
    8. Luís M A Bettencourt & José Lobo & Deborah Strumsky & Geoffrey B West, 2010. "Urban Scaling and Its Deviations: Revealing the Structure of Wealth, Innovation and Crime across Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(11), pages 1-9, November.
    9. Alves, Luiz G.A. & Ribeiro, Haroldo V. & Mendes, Renio S., 2013. "Scaling laws in the dynamics of crime growth rate," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 392(11), pages 2672-2679.
    10. Wei Pan & Gourab Ghoshal & Coco Krumme & Manuel Cebrian & Alex Pentland, 2013. "Urban characteristics attributable to density-driven tie formation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 1-7, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. António Curado & Bruno Damásio & Sara Encarnação & Cristian Candia & Flávio L Pinheiro, 2021. "Scaling behavior of public procurement activity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(12), pages 1-19, December.
    2. Lei, Weiqian & Jiao, Limin & Xu, Gang, 2022. "Understanding the urban scaling of urban land with an internal structure view to characterize China’s urbanization," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    3. Gudipudi, Ramana & Rybski, Diego & Lüdeke, Matthias K.B. & Zhou, Bin & Liu, Zhu & Kropp, Jürgen P., 2019. "The efficient, the intensive, and the productive: Insights from urban Kaya scaling," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 236(C), pages 155-162.
    4. Alves, Luiz G.A. & Ribeiro, Haroldo V. & Rodrigues, Francisco A., 2018. "Crime prediction through urban metrics and statistical learning," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 505(C), pages 435-443.
    5. Sutton, Jack & Shahtahmassebi, Golnaz & Hanley, Quentin S. & Ribeiro, Haroldo V., 2024. "A heteroscedastic Bayesian generalized logistic regression model with application to scaling problems," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    6. Fabiano L Ribeiro & Joao Meirelles & Vinicius M Netto & Camilo Rodrigues Neto & Andrea Baronchelli, 2020. "On the relation between transversal and longitudinal scaling in cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-20, May.
    7. Ganguly, Prasangsha & Mukherjee, Sayanti, 2021. "A multifaceted risk assessment approach using statistical learning to evaluate socio-environmental factors associated with regional felony and misdemeanor rates," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 574(C).
    8. Alves, Luiz G.A. & Andrade, José S. & Hanley, Quentin S. & Ribeiro, Haroldo V., 2019. "The hidden traits of endemic illiteracy in cities," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 515(C), pages 566-574.
    9. Andres Gomez-Lievano & Oscar Patterson-Lomba, 2018. "Estimating the drivers of urban economic complexity and their connection to economic performance," Papers 1812.02842, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    10. Chenchen Shi & Naliang Guo & Xiaoping Zhu & Feng Wu, 2022. "Assessing Urban Resilience from the Perspective of Scaling Law: Evidence from Chinese Cities," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-23, October.
    11. Wang, Jia & Hu, Jun & Shen, Shifei & Zhuang, Jun & Ni, Shunjiang, 2020. "Crime risk analysis through big data algorithm with urban metrics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 545(C).
    12. Nengroo, Aasif Hussain & Bhat, Gulam Mohammad, 2017. "Why child labour? Evidences from homebased carpet weaving industry of Kashmir," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 50-56.
    13. Rafael Molinaro & Mohammad K. Najjar & Ahmed W. A. Hammad & Assed Haddad & Elaine Vazquez, 2020. "Urban Development Index (UDI): A Comparison between the City of Rio de Janeiro and Four Other Global Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-25, January.
    14. Diego Rybski & Dominik E Reusser & Anna-Lena Winz & Christina Fichtner & Till Sterzel & Jürgen P Kropp, 2017. "Cities as nuclei of sustainability?," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 44(3), pages 425-440, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yves Bettignies & Joao Meirelles & Gabriela Fernandez & Franziska Meinherz & Paul Hoekman & Philippe Bouillard & Aristide Athanassiadis, 2019. "The Scale-Dependent Behaviour of Cities: A Cross-Cities Multiscale Driver Analysis of Urban Energy Use," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-20, June.
    2. Yusra Ghafoor & Yi-Shin Chen & Kuan-Ta Chen, 2019. "Social Interaction Scaling for Contact Networks," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(9), pages 1-14, May.
    3. Alves, L.G.A. & Ribeiro, H.V. & Lenzi, E.K. & Mendes, R.S., 2014. "Empirical analysis on the connection between power-law distributions and allometries for urban indicators," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 409(C), pages 175-182.
    4. Joao Meirelles & Camilo Rodrigues Neto & Fernando Fagundes Ferreira & Fabiano Lemes Ribeiro & Claudia Rebeca Binder, 2018. "Evolution of urban scaling: Evidence from Brazil," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-15, October.
    5. Luiz G A Alves & Haroldo V Ribeiro & Ervin K Lenzi & Renio S Mendes, 2013. "Distance to the Scaling Law: A Useful Approach for Unveiling Relationships between Crime and Urban Metrics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-8, August.
    6. Cardoso, M. & Souza, J.T.G. & Neli, R.R. & Souza, W.E., 2023. "Scaling laws from Brazilian state election results point out that, the candidate’s chance to win increases by investing more campaign efforts in smaller electorates," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 619(C).
    7. Gudipudi, Ramana & Rybski, Diego & Lüdeke, Matthias K.B. & Zhou, Bin & Liu, Zhu & Kropp, Jürgen P., 2019. "The efficient, the intensive, and the productive: Insights from urban Kaya scaling," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 236(C), pages 155-162.
    8. Brinkley, Catherine & Raj, Subhashni, 2022. "Perfusion and urban thickness: The shape of cities," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    9. Qingsong He & Lingping Huang & Jing Li, 2022. "Rediscovering the Scaling Law of Urban Land from a Multi-Scale Perspective—A Case Study of Wuhan," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-15, June.
    10. Andres Gomez-Lievano & Oscar Patterson-Lomba, 2018. "Estimating the drivers of urban economic complexity and their connection to economic performance," Papers 1812.02842, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    11. Bogusław Wowrzeczka, 2021. "City of Waste—Importance of Scale," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-14, April.
    12. David Levinson, 2012. "Network Structure and City Size," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(1), pages 1-11, January.
    13. Chen, Yanguang, 2017. "Multi-scaling allometric analysis for urban and regional development," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 465(C), pages 673-689.
    14. Tasnuva Mahjabin & Susana Garcia & Caitlin Grady & Alfonso Mejia, 2018. "Large cities get more for less: Water footprint efficiency across the US," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(8), pages 1-17, August.
    15. Caio Porto de Castro & Gervásio Ferreira dos Santos & Anderson Dias de Freitas & Maria Isabel dos Santos & Roberto Fernandes Silva Andrade & Maurício Lima Barreto, 2020. "Socio-economic urban scaling properties: Influence of regional geographic heterogeneities in Brazil," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-17, December.
    16. Alves, Luiz G.A. & Ribeiro, Haroldo V. & Rodrigues, Francisco A., 2018. "Crime prediction through urban metrics and statistical learning," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 505(C), pages 435-443.
    17. Chen, Yanguang & Wang, Yihan & Li, Xijing, 2019. "Fractal dimensions derived from spatial allometric scaling of urban form," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 122-134.
    18. Chen, Yanguang, 2014. "An allometric scaling relation based on logistic growth of cities," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 65-77.
    19. Huang, Siyu & Shi, Yi & Chen, Qinghua & Li, Xiaomeng, 2022. "The growth path of high-tech industries: Statistical laws and evolution demands," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 603(C).
    20. Lei, Weiqian & Jiao, Limin & Xu, Zhibang & Zhu, Xinhua, 2024. "Evolution of urban land and population system coupling micro–dynamics and macro-stability: Trends and paths," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0134862. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.