More on size and the metabolism rate of cities

Recently posted about the debate about how much size matters vs connectedness.


The NY Times Magazine has an article on Geoffrey West's models of urban economies of scale. Good for him for doing the math, if no one really had before. But, yeah, hate to agree with Joel Kotkin on much, but it does come out seeming quite simplistic.

Also, the dire environmental predictions later in the article equate economic output with resource consumption and energy use. This is likely a sublinear relationship itself, and could become much more so, with, say, a well designed carbon tax.