Is There a Centralization of the Major Cities?

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There does seem to be some a momentum toward centralization of the major city functions. There tends to be an urban corps, much like a cell has a right? And that's the kind of thing that these eighteenth century people were trying to explain. It also might be a sorting effect, where you you have a group of firms, and so people are commuting long distances to get and to work there. But with a nsilicon vallyits, it's easier to have multiple tech firms together than they can hire, you know, from each other and compete a rather than being somewhere else.

The concept of the city is a crucial one for human civilization: people living in proximity, bringing in resources from outside, separated from the labors of subsistence so they can engage in the trade of goods and ideas. But we are still learning how cities grow and adapt to new conditions, as well as how we can best guide them to be livable as well as functional. I talk with urban scientist Catherine Brinkley about the structure of cities, including the fractal nature of their shapes, as well as what we can do to make cities thrive as much as possible.

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Catherine Brinkley received a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning as well as a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently Associate Professor of Human Ecology and Faculty Director at the Center for Regional Change at the University of California, Davis. She has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and the Santa Fe Institute.