ArticleScientific reports2020
Rural-urban scaling of age, mortality, crime and property reveals a loss of expected self-similar behaviour.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comprehensive indicators and fine granularity refine density scaling laws in rural-urban systems.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Scaling COVID-19 rates with population size in the United States.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Impact of inter-city interactions on disease scaling.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- ELIMINATE: a PCR record-based macroelimination project for systematic recall of HCV-RNA-positive persons in Austria.Wiener klinische Wochenschrift · 2024Article
- Article
- Scaling of mortality in 742 metropolitan areas of the Americas.Science advances · 2021Article
- Distance to highway and factory density related to lung cancer death and associated spatial heterogeneity in effects in Jiading District, Shanghai.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The urban scaling hypothesis has improved our understanding of cities; however, rural areas have been neglected. We investigated rural-urban population density scaling in England and Wales using 67 indicators of crime, mortality, property, and age. Most indicators exhibited segmented scaling about a median critical density of 27 people per hectare. Above the critical density, urban regions preferentially attract young adults (25-40 years) and lose older people (> 45 years). Density scale adjusted metrics (DSAMs) were analysed using hierarchical clustering, networks, and self-organizing maps (SOMs) revealing regional differences and an inverse relationship between excess value of property transactions and a range of preventable mortality (e.g. diabetes, suicide, lung cancer). The most striking finding is that age demographics break the expected self-similarity underlying the urban scaling hypothesis. Urban dynamism is fuelled by preferential attraction of young adults and not a fundamental property of total urban population.
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