Keuschnigg Marc, Mutgan Selcan, Hedström Peter
Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University, Norra Grytsgatan 10, 601 74 Norrköping, Sweden.
Sci Adv. 2019 Jan 30;5(1):eaav0042. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aav0042. eCollection 2019 Jan.
Superlinear growth in cities has been explained as an emergent consequence of increased social interactions in dense urban environments. Using geocoded microdata from Swedish population registers, we remove population composition effects from the scaling relation of wage income to test how much of the previously reported superlinear scaling is truly attributable to increased social interconnectivity in cities. The Swedish data confirm the previously reported scaling relations on the aggregate level, but they provide better information on the micromechanisms responsible for them. We find that the standard interpretation of urban scaling is incomplete as social interactions only explain about half of the scaling parameter of wage income and that scaling relations substantively reflect differences in cities' sociodemographic composition. Those differences are generated by selective migration of highly productive individuals into larger cities. Big cities grow through their attraction of talent from their hinterlands and the already-privileged benefit disproportionally from urban agglomeration.
城市的超线性增长被解释为密集城市环境中社会互动增加的一种涌现结果。利用来自瑞典人口登记册的地理编码微观数据，我们从工资收入的规模关系中去除人口构成效应，以检验先前报告的超线性规模关系中有多少真正归因于城市中社会互联性的增加。瑞典的数据在总体层面证实了先前报告的规模关系，但它们提供了关于造成这些关系的微观机制的更好信息。我们发现，城市规模的标准解释并不完整，因为社会互动仅解释了工资收入规模参数的约一半，而且规模关系实质性地反映了城市社会人口构成的差异。这些差异是由高生产力个体向大城市的选择性迁移产生的。大城市通过吸引腹地的人才而发展壮大，而已经享有特权的群体从城市集聚中获得了不成比例的利益。
