Introduction to Urban Science: Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems

Standardized bowls, thought to represent daily wages or rations in grain, Mass construction technologies (e.g., mudbricks, masonry, and canals), Property records and records of warehousing and economic transactions, Written laws, especially regulating conflict and theft, and associated standardized penalties, Writing and early reflections on the hu

the initial ingredients for an idealized urban system: (1) an evenly distributed population in space, aggregated in a number of settlements; (2) that all settlements (big and small) be equidistant; and that all settlements (3) fill an unbounded, limitless, homogeneous plane

To do better, we need to look elsewhere, at places in science where a statistical approach to information, growth, and strategic behavior go hand in hand.

as large-scale connectivity becomes possible

Expanding cooperation to nonkin involves shared morals and ethics as well as the formal development of law and punishment, often associated with organized religion and Politics.

to the corresponding population share,

the loss of nodes implies some loss of information,

the agent’s life path is a source of income as well as evidence,

cities typically welcome difference because they can often integrate it to everyone’s advantage,

Most moves are local. The great body of our migrants only proceed a short distance.