Cities Are Like Elephants: They Get More Economical With Size

Cities have long been compared to organisms—Plato talked about the city as a corporeal body, and the urban spaces we’ve created have come to resemble their creators. Structurally, they follow a distinctly biological design and obey the same metabolic laws that govern every organism. 

Below the skin and under the street lie the intestines, the metal intestines that allow suburbs to sprawl and skyscrapers to rise. The fiber-optic cables are nerves, and the subway tunnels are thick jugular veins. Energy is distributed, and waste is digested. All this generates a sort of animal heat, which escapes from the grates in the gutters. The foul steam is exhaled breath. But how true is this metaphor? Are cities really like living things?

A team of physicists and economists led by Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute recently set out to answer these questions. It turns out that, in many respects, cities act just like creatures. They obey the same metabolic laws that govern every organism. Their infrastructure follows a distinctly biological design, which helps explain why cities are able to grow.

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