Diego Rybski
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View article: A Review of Percolation-like Transitions in Cities and Landscapes
A Review of Percolation-like Transitions in Cities and Landscapes Open
We review papers analyzing percolation-like transitions in cities, urban systems, and landscapes. We organize their presentation according to (i) landscape ecology, (ii) city morphology and properties, (iii) modeling city growth, (iv) traf…
View article: Large cities lose their growth advantage as urban systems mature
Large cities lose their growth advantage as urban systems mature Open
The share of the world population living in cities with more than one million people rose from 11\% in 1975 to 24\% in 2025 (our estimates). Will this trend towards greater concentration in large cities continue or level off? We introduce …
View article: Minimizing Urban Carbon Emissions and Heat Island Intensity: A theoretical study
Minimizing Urban Carbon Emissions and Heat Island Intensity: A theoretical study Open
Cities exhibit both beneficial and detrimental characteristics, many of which stem from agglomeration effects and are, to a first approximation, influenced by population size. However, urban density also plays a critical role. For example,…
View article: Pairwise-Interaction Model Unifies Different forms of urban size dependence of UHI intensity
Pairwise-Interaction Model Unifies Different forms of urban size dependence of UHI intensity Open
City size is an important determinant of the urban heat island (UHI) intensity. While most studies report a logarithmic dependence of UHI intensity on city size, other functions like power-law and logistic functions have also been reported…
View article: One-Dimensional Urban Scaling
One-Dimensional Urban Scaling Open
In this paper, we apply recent findings from urban scaling theory to evaluate how it could be applied to a one-dimensional archetypal city. Our focus is on how the simplicity of a one-dimensional model can provide intuitive insights that m…
View article: Commentary: A road map for future data-driven urban planning and environmental health research
Commentary: A road map for future data-driven urban planning and environmental health research Open
Recent advances in data science and urban environmental health research utilise large-scale databases (100s-1000s of cities) to explore the complex interplay of urban characteristics such as city form and size, climate, mobility, exposure,…
View article: Pairwise‐Interaction Model Unifies Different Asymptotic Shapes of UHI Intensity
Pairwise‐Interaction Model Unifies Different Asymptotic Shapes of UHI Intensity Open
City size is a primary determinant of the urban heat island (UHI) intensity, with its effects further nuanced by the urban form. But how to factor in the urban form into the UHI assessment remains unresolved. We propose an every‐pair‐inter…
View article: Indication of long-range correlations governing city size
Indication of long-range correlations governing city size Open
City systems are characterized by the functional organization of cities on a regional or country scale. While there is a relatively good empirical and theoretical understanding of city size distributions, insights about their spatial organ…
View article: How buildings change the fundamental allometry
How buildings change the fundamental allometry Open
We demonstrate that the original fundamental allometry alone cannot accurately describe the relationship between urban area and population size. Instead, building height is a third factor that interplays with area and population. To illust…
View article: Comparison of Embodied Carbon of 3D-printed vs. Conventionally Built Houses
Comparison of Embodied Carbon of 3D-printed vs. Conventionally Built Houses Open
The construction sector makes a considerable contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Considering the ongoing urbanization trends and climate change urgency, the exploration of alternative construction techniques should be a mandat…
View article: Analytical solution for the long- and short-range every-pair-interactions model
Analytical solution for the long- and short-range every-pair-interactions model Open
Many physical, biological, and social systems exhibit emergent properties that arise from the interactions between their components (cells). In this study, we systematically treat every-pair interactions (a) that exhibit power-law dependen…
View article: Auerbach, Lotka, and Zipf: pioneers of power-law city-size distributions
Auerbach, Lotka, and Zipf: pioneers of power-law city-size distributions Open
Power-law city-size distributions are a statistical regularity researched in many countries and urban systems. In this history of science treatise we reconsider Felix Auerbach’s paper published in 1913. We reviewed his analysis and found (…
View article: Measuring the effect of climate change on migration flows: Limitations of existing data and analytical frameworks
Measuring the effect of climate change on migration flows: Limitations of existing data and analytical frameworks Open
The aim of this paper is to review quantitative large-N studies that investigate the effects of climate change on migration flows. Recent meta-analyses have shown that most studies find that climate change influences migration flows. There…
View article: Employment and Land Use in the United States: cross-sectional and short-term Trends reveal the Importance of the 96th Meridian
Employment and Land Use in the United States: cross-sectional and short-term Trends reveal the Importance of the 96th Meridian Open
A pervasive trend in economic development is the shift from agricultural to manufacturing and finally to service economies. Because the type of employment associated with each sector influences natural resource use this global trend may ma…
View article: Cities as complex systems—Collection overview
Cities as complex systems—Collection overview Open
This collection provides a contemporary excerpt of “Cities as complex systems”. The contributions have been submitted between April and October 2020. We briefly discuss example papers addressing the themes “urban scaling”, “urban mobility”…
View article: Commuting network effect on urban wealth scaling
Commuting network effect on urban wealth scaling Open
Urban scaling theory explains the increasing returns to scale of urban wealth indicators by the per capita increase of human interactions within cities. This explanation implicitly assumes urban areas as isolated entities and ignores their…
View article: Mathematical models to explain the origin of urban scaling laws: a synthetic review
Mathematical models to explain the origin of urban scaling laws: a synthetic review Open
The quest for a theory of cities that could offer a quantitative and systematic approach to manage cities is at the top priority, given the challenges humanity faces due to the increasing urbanization and densification of cities. If such a…
View article: Zipf's law and urban scaling: Hypotheses towards a Unified Urban Theory
Zipf's law and urban scaling: Hypotheses towards a Unified Urban Theory Open
We propose hypotheses describing the empirical finding of an association between the exponents of urban GDP scaling and Zipf's law for cities. These hypotheses represent various combinations of directional or reciprocal causal links betwee…
View article: Characterizing the sectoral development of cities
Characterizing the sectoral development of cities Open
Previous research has identified a predictive model of how a nation’s distribution of gross domestic product (GDP) among agriculture ( a ), industry ( i ), and services ( s ) changes as a country develops. Here we use this national model t…
View article: Modeling Urban Morphology by Unifying Diffusion-Limited Aggregation and Stochastic Gravitation
Modeling Urban Morphology by Unifying Diffusion-Limited Aggregation and Stochastic Gravitation Open
More than 30 years ago, Diffusion-Limited Aggregation (DLA) has been studied as mechanism to generate structures sharing similarities with real-world cities. Recently, a stochastic gravitation model (SGM) has been proposed for the same pur…
View article: Association between population distribution and urban GDP scaling
Association between population distribution and urban GDP scaling Open
Urban scaling and Zipf’s law are two fundamental paradigms for the science of cities. These laws have mostly been investigated independently and are often perceived as disassociated matters. Here we present a large scale investigation abou…
View article: A Gini approach to spatial CO2 emissions
A Gini approach to spatial CO2 emissions Open
Combining global gridded population and fossil fuel based CO 2 emission data at 1 km scale, we investigate the spatial origin of CO 2 emissions in relation to the population distribution within countries. We depict the correlations between…
View article: Sea-level rise and continuous adaptation: residual damage rises faster than the protection costs
Sea-level rise and continuous adaptation: residual damage rises faster than the protection costs Open
Damage cost curves -- relating the typical damage of a natural hazard to its physical magnitude -- represent an indispensable ingredient necessary for climate change impact assessments. Combining such curves with the occurrence probability…
View article: UrbanFood Systems: How Regionalization Can Contributeto Climate Change Mitigation
UrbanFood Systems: How Regionalization Can Contributeto Climate Change Mitigation Open
Cities will play a key role in the
grand challenge of nourishing
a growing global population, because, due to their population density,
they set the demand. To ensure that food systems are sustainable,
as well as nourishing, one solution o…
View article: The interpretation of urban scaling analysis in time
The interpretation of urban scaling analysis in time Open
Scaling is a general analytical framework used by many disciplines—from physics to biology and the social sciences—to characterize how population-averaged properties of a collective vary with its size. The observation of scale invariance o…