Li, RuiqiDong, LeiZhang, JiangWang, XinranWang, Wen-XuDi, ZengruStanley, Harry Eugene2020-04-012020-04-012017-11-28Ruiqi Li, Lei Dong, Jiang Zhang, Xinran Wang, Wen-Xu Wang, Zengru Di, H Eugene Stanley. 2017. "Simple spatial scaling rules behind complex cities." NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, Volume 8, 7 pp. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01882-w2041-1723https://hdl.handle.net/2144/39926Although most of wealth and innovation have been the result of human interaction and cooperation, we are not yet able to quantitatively predict the spatial distributions of three main elements of cities: population, roads, and socioeconomic interactions. By a simple model mainly based on spatial attraction and matching growth mechanisms, we reveal that the spatial scaling rules of these three elements are in a consistent framework, which allows us to use any single observation to infer the others. All numerical and theoretical results are consistent with empirical data from ten representative cities. In addition, our model can also provide a general explanation of the origins of the universal super- and sub-linear aggregate scaling laws and accurately predict kilometre-level socioeconomic activity. Our work opens a new avenue for uncovering the evolution of cities in terms of the interplay among urban elements, and it has a broad range of applications.7 pagesen-USCopyright © The Author(s) 2017. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Science & technologyMultidisciplinary sciencesGrowthNetworksDensitySizeLifeCityArticle10.1038/s41467-017-01882-w293427