Sublime

as cities grow and their networks evolve, the area or volume of the networks needed to keep them functionally connected tends to become smaller on a per capita basis. For example, in larger cities more people can share the same bus or segment of road or sewer pipe.

not vary.

These data make a strong case that, as human social networks grow, they necessarily lead to systems that require fewer resources per person, and produce more per person. In other words, the benefits of scale for human groups have always been there.

The science of complex systems is the study of how local interactions can lead to global consequences.

We know that life’s remarkable robustness, in large part, is dependent on variation; systems that suppress or lose their diversity are prone to collapse.

In the 1930s, Max Kleiber, a Swiss agricultural biologist, observed that, across mammal species, from shrews to elephants, the energy required to maintain basic metabolic function is closely correlated with an organism’s body size.

some form of complexity theory is required if we are to understand many of the intimate, and patently uncertain, interactions found in modern society.