Geoffrey West
Geoffrey West
Geoffrey Brian Westis a British theoretical physicist, former president and distinguished professor of the Santa Fe Institute. He is one of the leading scientists working on a scientific model of cities. Among other things his work states that with the doubling of a city's size, services per capita will generally increase by 15%...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPhysicist
great magnet people plays sucking
A city plays the role of a great big magnet that's sucking people up.
ask center cities high job move people
If you ask people why they move to the city, they always give the same reasons. They've come to get a job or follow their friends or to be at the center of a scene. That's why we pay the high rent. Cities are all about the people, not the infrastructure.
people together productive
When people come together, they become much more productive.
crazy cities people
Cities tolerate crazy people. Companies don't.
science taking
Every fundamental law has exceptions. But you still need the law or else all you have is observations that don't make sense. And that's not science. That's just taking notes.
bomb came grew recovering saw sites war
When I first saw California, it was extraordinary. Because I came from old, black, dark England, still recovering from World War II. I grew up with bomb sites everywhere.
energy food human power rest runs takes
A human being at rest runs on 90 watts. That's how much power you need just to lie down. And if you're a hunter-gatherer and you live in the Amazon, you'll need about 250 watts. That's how much energy it takes to run about and find food.
per
The bigger the city is, the less infrastructure you need per capita.
hard
It's hard to kill a city, but easy to kill a company.
amazing govern
I've always wanted to find the rules that govern everything. It's amazing that such rules exist. It's even more amazing that we can find them.
spent string theory
I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.
bigger cells energy hard harder less needed sustain
Your cells are not working as hard as your dog's but harder than your horse's. The bigger the animal, the less energy needed to sustain a gram of tissue.
branch cent history length life mammal ninth offspring per physiology pulse rate size
Tell me the size of a mammal and I can tell you, to about 85 per cent level, pretty much everything about its physiology and life history, such as how long it is going to live, how many offspring it will have, the length of its aorta, how long it will take to mature, what is the pulse rate in the ninth branch of its circuitry.
connection four individual powerful six true
On average, an individual doesn't have a powerful connection with more than four to six people, and that's just as true here in the U.S. as it is in China.