Abstract:
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Cities can be considered complex systems, constantly changing
and adapting to new economic, social, and cultural dynamics. They exist in
many forms and over a wide range of sizes. In spite of this, researchers have
discovered regularities in the form of simple scaling laws that emerge when
urban outputs of many types, such as income, patents or energy consumption,
are correlated with population size. This article briefly presents some facts
and figures on scaling correlations in urban contexts and how this evidence
can determine and influence the obsolescence of energy infrastructures. It
finally suggests several strategies which could be used to ameliorate the
impacts of this performance in urban consumption forecasting assessment
processes. |