The apparently remarkable qualities of New York are actually natural and unsurprising products of its size, argues SFI researcher Luis Bettencourt, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Santa Fe Institute, both in New Mexico.
Bigger cities are more intense by nature: richer, more productive, more creative and more dangerous. Indeed, Bettencourt and his colleagues, including Geoffrey West, have shown, doubling the population of a city gives a 15 percent premium on each of these factors.
Since New York City is the most populous city in the United States, New Yorkers should make more money, for example, than other Americans on average. To be exceptional, New Yorkers would need to be raking in even more than the princely sums you’d expect.
Read the full Science News article (December 6, 2010)
Read an op-ed by Luis Bettencourt in the Santa Fe New Mexican (January 24, 2011)
Read SFI's news release about the work (November 10, 2010)
Read the researchers' PLoS One paper (November 10, 2010)
Read the article in The Oregonian (January 22, 2011)