Urban Scaling Observed in Japanese Telephone directory Data

Abstract

How different urban properties (such as number of hospitals, shops, patents, andcrimes) depend on city size? It has been demonstrated that most urban propertiesYfollow theallometric scaling lawY/N, whereNandare population size of a city and the scalingexponent. Urban infrastructure has been shown to scale sub-linearly ( <1) re ecting large citiesdon't need large infrastructure, whereas output and income have been shown to scale super-linearly( >1) re ecting high per capita in large cities. We empirically analyze urban scaling observed inJapanese telephone directory data. This data are renewed every 4 months, offering comprehensivelatest address info on nearly all shops, rms, hospitals, schools, parks, etc on a nationwide scale.These urban properties are divided into 332 categories depending on the urban role. This allows usto study and discuss systematically the scaling exponent that are associated with various aspects ofurban properties. We show that obtained scaling exponents help to characterize urban properties.