There may be some debate about whether or not cities are gaining or losing population. What is clear from the academic literature, however, is that cities stimulate innovation and economic productivity. Previous research has shown that the larger a metropolitan area, the more it cranks out things like patents and wealth. The mechanism works both ways, however. While cities act as engines for success, they also remain engines for crime and disease.
In the scientific world, the idea behind this enormous growth — of both good stuff and bad — is called “superlinear scaling.” (That term, as Jonah Lehrer explained earlier this week, is just “a fancy way of describing the increased output of people living in big cities.”) A pair of researchers recently wondered whether prosocial behavior — activities that promote social welfare, like volunteering — might exhibit superlinear scaling in cities as well.
Using census data, Samuel Arbesman and Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard Medical School examined urban populations for their tendencies to display several prosocial behaviors, including voting, organ donation, and political contribution. As they report in the journal Physica A (in press), Arbesman and Christakis believed this positive social behavior would indeed be superlinear, in part to offset the less desirable elements of a city, such as crime:
If larger networks … fostered increases in violence more rapidly than, say, increases in kindness, city growth would be constrained in a fundamental way.
What they found, however, was that prosocial behaviors “do not obey a clear pattern.” People in cities aren’t more likely to vote or to donate a living organ, though they’re much more likely to give a deceased organ or a political contribution. Taken together, these positive behaviors do not scale the same way that innovation and economic growth typically scale within cities. In short, conclude Arbesman and Christakis, “prosocial behavior is not a single category when it comes to understanding urban scaling with respect to population.”
The mixed results harmonize with previous findings. Some studies have found that people in cities are more likely to return a lost letter than those in both suburbs and small towns. Others have found that willingness to trust strangers declines as a region’s population grows.
The unexpected findings might be explained, in part, by which behaviors the researchers chose to define as “prosocial.” Political contributions, particularly the sizable sort found in cities, could rightfully be considered a selfish endeavor, as opposed to a positive social one. (At the same time, it seems likely that Arbesman and Christakis were limited by available data sets.) Lehrer believes a clearer insight will emerge from a comparative study of cities:
Why, for instance, does City A have such high rates of kidney donation? Why does City B have such low levels of voter turnout? … By examining the data, we might be able to better understand the levers of public policy, those norms and laws that make us kinder, gentler creatures.
Or, if not kinder and gentler, at least more willing to give up the kidney we no longer need after getting hit by a taxi.
Image: ragingwire
Thanks to Samuel Arbesman for providing the paper, and to Cardiff Garcia for spotting it.
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