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 disconnected phase,

As we ascend in scale through the sciences away from physics to chemistry, biology, ecology, and the social sciences, the subject of diversity acquires increasingly greater importance,

For large σS, there is strong substitution,

leads to greater information than the sum of the parts.

(3) particular kind of conflict that can arise in hunter-gatherer camps and be reflected in the (4) kinship versus physical distancing expressed in camping arrangements.

these patterns are the result not of accidental fluctuations but rather of decades of choice and adaptation by successive waves of different individuals sharing certain traits.

We require one last assumption: that there is perfect competition, so the maximum profit (net income) is actually zero!

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