Urban Scaling in Prehispanic Central Mexico - Semantic Scholar
Urban Scaling in Prehispanic Central Mexico Scott G. Ortman Andrew Cabaniss Luís M. A. Bettencourt
SFI WORKING PAPER: 2013-01-001
SFI Working Papers contain accounts of scienti5ic work of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Santa Fe Institute. We accept papers intended for publication in peer-‐reviewed journals or proceedings volumes, but not papers that have already appeared in print. Except for papers by our external faculty, papers must be based on work done at SFI, inspired by an invited visit to or collaboration at SFI, or funded by an SFI grant. ©NOTICE: This working paper is included by permission of the contributing author(s) as a means to ensure timely distribution of the scholarly and technical work on a non-‐commercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the author(s). It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may be reposted only with the explicit permission of the copyright holder. www.santafe.edu
SANTA FE INSTITUTE
Urban scaling in Prehispanic Central Mexico Scott G. Ortman1,2*, Andrew Cabaniss1,3 , and Luís M. A. Bettencourt1 1
Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA.
2
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 23390 Road K, Cortez, CO, USA.
3
Classics Department, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA.
*Corresponding Author: [email protected] January 7, 2013 Abstract: Despite the fact that cities are increasingly the fundamental socioeconomic units of human societies worldwide, a unified quantitative framework concerning urban form and function has yet to be established. As a step in this direction, we analyze settlement data from the Prehispanic Basin of Mexico to show that this system displays spatial scaling properties analogous to those observed for modern cities. Our data derive from some 1400 settlements occupied over two millennia and spanning four major cultural periods characterized by different levels of political centralization and socioeconomic development. We show that, for each period, total settlement area increases with population size according to a scale invariant relation, with exponent α= 2/35/6, in agreement with expectations of emerging theory. These findings, from an urban system that evolved independently from old-world cities, suggest that principles of human settlement organization are very general and may apply to the entire range of human history. Keywords: Urban Scaling Theory, Archaeology, Settlement Patterns, Mesoamerica.
1
Many studies over the last few decades (1-9) have demonstrated that contemporary urban settlements exhibit statistical regularities describing how their properties – from socio-economic outputs to land area and extent of infrastructure – vary systematically with population size, N. Generally, socioeconomic quantities, Y, such as wages or violent crime, increase, on average, faster than population and are well described by scale invariant relations, Y=Y0Nβ, with β=1+δ~7/6>1, with δ~1/6 (6). Conversely, the volume of urban infrastructure (roads, pipes, etc) increases only sub-linearly with N, β=1-δ~5/6
SFI WORKING PAPER: 2013-01-001
SFI Working Papers contain accounts of scienti5ic work of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Santa Fe Institute. We accept papers intended for publication in peer-‐reviewed journals or proceedings volumes, but not papers that have already appeared in print. Except for papers by our external faculty, papers must be based on work done at SFI, inspired by an invited visit to or collaboration at SFI, or funded by an SFI grant. ©NOTICE: This working paper is included by permission of the contributing author(s) as a means to ensure timely distribution of the scholarly and technical work on a non-‐commercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the author(s). It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may be reposted only with the explicit permission of the copyright holder. www.santafe.edu
SANTA FE INSTITUTE
Urban scaling in Prehispanic Central Mexico Scott G. Ortman1,2*, Andrew Cabaniss1,3 , and Luís M. A. Bettencourt1 1
Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Rd, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA.
2
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center, 23390 Road K, Cortez, CO, USA.
3
Classics Department, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA.
*Corresponding Author: [email protected] January 7, 2013 Abstract: Despite the fact that cities are increasingly the fundamental socioeconomic units of human societies worldwide, a unified quantitative framework concerning urban form and function has yet to be established. As a step in this direction, we analyze settlement data from the Prehispanic Basin of Mexico to show that this system displays spatial scaling properties analogous to those observed for modern cities. Our data derive from some 1400 settlements occupied over two millennia and spanning four major cultural periods characterized by different levels of political centralization and socioeconomic development. We show that, for each period, total settlement area increases with population size according to a scale invariant relation, with exponent α= 2/35/6, in agreement with expectations of emerging theory. These findings, from an urban system that evolved independently from old-world cities, suggest that principles of human settlement organization are very general and may apply to the entire range of human history. Keywords: Urban Scaling Theory, Archaeology, Settlement Patterns, Mesoamerica.
1
Many studies over the last few decades (1-9) have demonstrated that contemporary urban settlements exhibit statistical regularities describing how their properties – from socio-economic outputs to land area and extent of infrastructure – vary systematically with population size, N. Generally, socioeconomic quantities, Y, such as wages or violent crime, increase, on average, faster than population and are well described by scale invariant relations, Y=Y0Nβ, with β=1+δ~7/6>1, with δ~1/6 (6). Conversely, the volume of urban infrastructure (roads, pipes, etc) increases only sub-linearly with N, β=1-δ~5/6
