On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Pranesh Prakash wrote: > For instance, if one city is 10 times as populous as another one, does > it need 10 times as many gas stations? No. Bigger cities have more gas > stations than smaller ones (of course), but not nearly in direct > proportion to their size. The number of gas stations grows only in > proportion to the 0.77 power of population. The crucial thing is that > 0.77 is less than 1. This implies that the bigger a city is, the fewer > gas stations it has per person. Put simply, bigger cities enjoy > economies of scale. In this sense, bigger is greener.
this argument of 'bigger is greener' seems very flimsy. Just because you have fewer stations makes it greener ? what about all the time / pollution / energy spent in traffic jams in the bigger cities and the sanitation output of the millions of people ? ashok
