Cities as Organisms: Allometric Scaling of Urban Road Networks

Authors

  • Horacio Samaniego Department of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
  • Melanie E. Moses University of New Mexico

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.v1i1.29

Keywords:

Road Networks, Urban Allometry, Urban Metabolism

Abstract

We propose a statistical approach to determine the features of urban road networks affecting accessibility. Our approach is inspired by metabolic scaling theory (MST) in biology (West et al. 1997). We study the structure of road networks across 425 cities of different sizes in the USA. We show decentralization as an important difference between urban road networks and biological vascular networks. Per capita road capacity is independent of the spatial extent of cities. Driving distances do depend on the size of the city, although not as much as is predicted by a completely centralized model. This intermediate pattern between centralized and decentralized extremes may reflect a mixture of different travel behaviors. The approach presented here offers a novel macroscopic perspective on the differences between small and large cities and on how the road infrastructure and traffic might change as cities grow.

Author Biography

Horacio Samaniego, Department of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

Landscape Ecologist currently Post Doctoral Fellow in the Computer Science Department at the University of New Mexico

Downloads

Additional Files

Published

2008-07-14

How to Cite

Samaniego, H., & Moses, M. E. (2008). Cities as Organisms: Allometric Scaling of Urban Road Networks. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.5198/jtlu.v1i1.29

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2008)

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with JTLU agree to the following terms: 1) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. 2) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. 3) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.