Open Access Journal Article

The Policy Relevance of Urban Scaling Laws: A Study on Impervious Ground in German Cities

by Rolf Bergs a,*
a
PRAC Bergs & Issa Partnership Co., Im Hopfengarten 19b, 65812 Bad Soden, Germany
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
JEA  2025 4(1):92; https://doi.org/10.58567/jea04010006
Received: 11 March 2024 / Accepted: 7 June 2024 / Published Online: 26 August 2024
View Full-Text
Download PDF

Abstract

The expansion of urban infrastructure is an important indicator of agglomeration and a major factor in the deterioration of the urban environment. The investment in urban infrastructure is accompanied by the sealing of ground. The implementation of effective policies to reduce the practice of sealing ground is impeded by the existence of conflicting interests and fiscal disincentives. A significant challenge is the dearth of policy-relevant information. Conventional analysis considers urban outcome indicators in proportion to population and neglects non-linear distribution patterns, thus obscuring global regularities that contain important information. The study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of urban imperviousness through the lens of urban scaling. The present study employs Germany as a case study to examine the extent to which the parameters of the scaling function differ between two types of cities. District Affiliated Cities (DACs) and Administrative City Districts (ACDs), which are afforded greater fiscal autonomy. The analysis indicates that the amount of sealed land exhibited a notable increase between 2006 and 2018 in the ACDs. Calibration of the scaling functions for cities with the actual coefficient of the DAC control estimate and a global orientation exponent (5/6) resulted in a 16% reduction of sealed ground. In conclusion, urban scaling laws offer a valuable tool for analyzing the complex dynamics of urban imperviousness and its control costs, thereby contributing to the formulation of more effective urban policies and planning.

Keywords: Urban Scaling; Imperviousness; Sustainable Development; Urban Economics; Urban Policy;
Copyright: © 2024 by Bergs. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Share and Cite

ACS Style
Bergs, R. The Policy Relevance of Urban Scaling Laws: A Study on Impervious Ground in German Cities. Journal of Economic Analysis, 2025, 4, 92. https://doi.org/10.58567/jea04010006
AMA Style
Bergs R. The Policy Relevance of Urban Scaling Laws: A Study on Impervious Ground in German Cities. Journal of Economic Analysis; 2025, 4(1):92. https://doi.org/10.58567/jea04010006
Chicago/Turabian Style
Bergs, Rolf 2025. "The Policy Relevance of Urban Scaling Laws: A Study on Impervious Ground in German Cities" Journal of Economic Analysis 4, no.1:92. https://doi.org/10.58567/jea04010006
APA style
Bergs, R. (2025). The Policy Relevance of Urban Scaling Laws: A Study on Impervious Ground in German Cities. Journal of Economic Analysis, 4(1), 92. https://doi.org/10.58567/jea04010006

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

References

  1. Alonso W (1964) Location and land use: Toward a general theory of land rent. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press
  2. Arcaute E, Hatna E, Ferguson P, Youn H, Johansson A, Batty, M (2015) Constructing cities, deconstructing scaling laws. Interface 12: 20140745. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2014.0745
  3. Arcaute E, Ramasco JJ (2022) Recent advances in urban system science: Models and data. PLOS One 17(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272863
  4. Artmann M (2015) Managing urban soil sealing in Munich and Leipzig (Germany) – From a wicked problem to clumsy solutions. Land Use Policy 46: 21-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2015.02.004
  5. Barthelemy, M. (2019) The statistical physics of cities. Nature Reviews Physics 1: 406–415. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-019-0054-2
  6. Behnisch M, Poglitsch H, Krüger T (2016) Soil sealing and the complex bundle of influential factors: Germany as a case study. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 5: 132. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi5080132
  7. Bergs R (2018) The detection of natural cities in the Netherlands: Nocturnal satellite imagery and Zipf’s Law. Review of Regional Research 38(2): 111–140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10037-018-0122-6
  8. Bergs R (2021) Spatial dependence in the rank-size distribution of cities – weak but not negligible. PLOS One 16(2): e0246796. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246796
  9. Bettencourt, LM, Lobo J, Helbing D, Kuhnert C, West G (2007) Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 104: 7301-7306. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.061017210
  10. Bettencourt LM (2013) The origins of scaling in cities. Science 340(6139). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1235823
  11. Black D, Henderson JV (1999) A theory of urban growth. Journal of Political Economy 107(2): 252-284. https://doi.org/10.1086/250060
  12. Brelsford C, Coon ET, Moran VE, Allan-Dumas M (2020) Urban scaling as validation for predictions of imperviousness from population. Geophysical Research Letters 47: e2020GL089742. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL089742
  13. Broekel T, Knuepling L, Mewes L (2023) Boosting, sorting and complexity – Urban scaling and innovation around the world. Journal of Economic Geography 23(5): 979-1016. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbad006
  14. Budde R, Neumann U (2019) The size ranking of cities in Germany: caught by a MAUP? GeoJournal 84: 1447-1464. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-018-9930-z
  15. Butler RV, Maher MD (1982) The control of externalities in a growing urban economy. Economic Inquiry XX: 155-163. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1982.tb01148.x
  16. Cabrera-Arnau C, Prieto Curiel R, Bishop SR (2020) Uncovering the behaviour of road accidents in urban areas. Royal Society Open Science 7: 191739. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.19173
  17. Correia CR, Roseland M (2022) Addressing negative externalities of urban development: Toward a more sustainable approach. Urban Science 6(38). https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci6020038
  18. Cottineau C, Hatna E, Arcaute E, Batty M (2016) Diverse cities or the systematic paradox of urban scaling laws. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 63: 80-94 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2016.04.006
  19. Ewing R, Hamidi S (2015) Compactness versus sprawl: A review of recent evidence from the United States. Journal of Planning Literature 30(4): 413-432. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412215595439
  20. Fragkias M (2015) How can we apply complexity science to urban policy? UGEC Viewpoints blog (https://ugecviewpoints.worldpress.com/2015/08/27/) accessed 2 October, 2023
  21. Fragkias M, Lobo J, Strumsky D, Seto KC (2013) Does size matter? Scaling of CO2 emissions and US urban areas. PLoS One 8(6): e64727. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0064727
  22. Fujita M, Krugman P, Venables AJ (1999) The spatial economy: Cities, regions and international trade. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press
  23. Gabaix X (2016) Power laws in economics: An introduction. Journal of Economic Perspectives 30(1): 185-206. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.30.1.185
  24. Harvey RO, Clark WAV (1965) The nature and economics of urban sprawl. Land Economics 41(1). https://www.jstor.org/stable/3144884
  25. He B, Guo R, Li M, Jing Y, Zhao Z, Zhu W, Zhang C, Zhang C, Ma D (2023) The fractal or scaling perspective on progressively generated intra-urban clusters from street junctions. International Journal of Digital Earth 16(1): 1944-1961. https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2023.2218118
  26. Henderson JV (1974) The sizes and types of cities. American Economic Review 64(4): 640-656. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1813316
  27. Hesse M, Starke T, Jänchen I, Glinka P (2019) Prosperierende Städte, abgehängte Regionen? -Empirische Untersuchung zu Wirtschaft und Steuerkraft. Wirtschaftsdienst 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10273-019-2517-6
  28. Isard W (1956) Location and space economy. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press
  29. Kaufmann T, Radaelli L, Bettencourt LM, Shmueli E (2022) Scaling of urban amenities: Generative statistics and implications for urban planning. EPJ Data Science 2022. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-022-00362-6
  30. Krugman P (1991) Increasing returns and economic geography. Journal of Political Economy 99(3): 483-499. https://doi.org/10.1086/261763
  31. Langer S, Korzhenevych A (2018) The effect of industrial and commercial land consumption on municipal tax revenue: Evidence from Bavaria. Land Use Policy 77: 279-287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.05.052
  32. Lefeber L (1957) Allocation in space: Production, transport and industrial location. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing
  33. Liu Z, Liu H, Lang W, Fang S, Chu C, He F (2022) Scaling law reveals unbalanced urban development in China. Sustainable Cities and Society 87: 104157. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.104157
  34. Lobo J, Bettencourt LMA, Strumsky D, West GB (2013) Urban scaling and the production function of cities. PLoS One 8(3): e58407. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058407
  35. Lösch A (1954) The economics of location. New Haven: Yale University Press
  36. Ma Q, Wu J, He C, Hu G (2018) Spatial scaling of urban impervious surfaces across evolving landscapes: From cities to urban regions. Landscape and Urban Planning 175: 50-61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.03.010
  37. Melo PC, Graham DJ, Noland RB (2009) A meta-analysis of estimates of urban agglomeration economies. Regional Science and Urban Economics 39: 332-342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2008.12.002
  38. Ribeiro H, Oehlers M, Moreno-Monroy AI, Kropp J, Rybski D (2020) Association between population distribution and urban GDP scaling. PLoS One 16(1): e0245771. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone. 0245771
  39. Richardson HW (1977) The new urban economics: And alternatives. London: Pion
  40. Rybski D, González M (2022) Cities as complex systems – Collection overview. PLOS One 17(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262964
  41. Sarkar S, Arcaute E, Hatna E, Alizadeh T, Searle G, Batty M (2020) Evidence for localization and urbanization economies in urban scaling. Royal Society Open Science 7: 191638. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.191638
  42. Seto KC, Güneralp B, Hutyra LR (2012) Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109(40). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211658109
  43. Strano E, Sood V (2016) Rich and Poor Cities in Europe: An Urban Scaling Approach to Mapping the European Economic Transition. PLoS One 11(8): e0159465. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone. 0159465
  44. Strohbach MW, Döring AO, Möck M, Sedrez M, Mumm O, Schneider AK, Weber S, Schröder B (2019) The "hidden urbanization“: Trends of impervious surface in low-density housing developments and resulting impacts on the water balance. Frontiers in Environmental Science 7:29. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2019.00029
  45. Tuia D, Moser G, Wurm M, Taubenböck H (2017) Land use modeling in North Rhine-Westphalia with interaction and scaling laws. 2017 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE). https://doi.org/10.1109/JURSE.2017.7924542
  46. Turner RK (2000) Markets and environmental quality. Clark G, Feldman MP, Gertler MS (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press: 585-606
  47. Webster C (2024) Tiebout, Coase and urban scaling. Annals of Regional Science 72 (online 27 April 2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-024-01272-3
  48. Weitzman ML (1974) Prices vs. quantites. Review of Economic Studies 41(4): 477-491. https://doi.org/10.2307/2296698
  49. Xiao Y, Gong P (2022) Removing spatial autocorrelation in urban scaling analysis. Cities 124: 103600. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.cities.2022.103600
  50. Xu G, Zhu M, Chen B, Salem M, Xu Z, Li X, Jiao L, Gong P (2023) Settlement scaling law reveals population-land tensions in 7000+African urban agglomerations. Habitat International 142: 102954. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102954
  51. Ye L, Wu AM (2014) Urbanization, land development and land financing: Evidence from Chinese cities. Journal of Urban Affairs 36: 354-368. https://doi.org/10.1111/juaf.12105
  52. Zünd D, Bettencourt LMA (2019) Growth and development in prefecture-level cities in China. PLoS One 14(9): e0221017. https://doi.org/ 10.1371/journal.pone.0221017