arXiv subjects

Vinicius M. Netto

Publications and source records attributed to Vinicius M. Netto.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Is segregation encoded in urban form? An entropy-based analysis

The footprints of residential segregation have long been documented, yet the role of urban form as both medium and manifestation of segregation remains under-specified. We investigate whether the configuration of the built fabric may encode residential segregation in its spatial structure, hypothesising that built-form entropy (BFE) regimes are associated with the spatial distribution of income groups and their local clustering in non-linear ways. We examine this by quantifying BFE through a Shannon-based measure computed from building footprints, characterising income-based distributions using the Gini index and Moran's I, and placing both on a common spatial footing through a regular tessellation. Applying this framework to Sao Paulo, Latin America's largest city, we find non-linear relationships between BFE, income, and segregation: income levels and residential clustering increase toward both extremes of the entropy spectrum, with a stronger rise at the high-entropy end. This asymmetry suggests that high-entropy urban forms are associated with distinct spatial processes of segregation, including elite enclaving and incremental development in lower-income settlements, while low-entropy forms reflect more selective occupation shaped by planning and market filtering. Overall, the findings suggest that built form is more than a neutral backdrop, functioning as both affordance and signal of segregation.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Urban Scaling Laws

Understanding how size influences the internal characteristics of a system is a crucial concern across various fields. Concepts like scale invariance, universalities, and fractals are fundamental to this inquiry and find application in biology, physics, and particularly urbanism. Size profoundly impacts how cities develop and function economically and socially. For example, what are the pros and cons of residing in larger cities? Is life really more expensive or less safe in larger cities? Or do they really offer more opportunities and generally higher incomes than smaller ones? To address such inquiries, we utilize theoretical tools from scaling theory, enabling a quantitative description of how a system's behavior changes across different scales, from micro to macro. Drawing parallels with research in biology and spatial economics, this chapter explores recent discoveries, ongoing progress, and unanswered questions regarding urban scaling.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Entropy and the City: Origins, trajectories and explorations of the concept in urban science

Entropy is arguably one of the most powerful concepts to understand the world, from the behavior of molecules to the expansion of the universe, from how life emerges to how hybrid complex systems like cities come into being and continue existing. Yet, despite its widespread application, it is also one of the most misunderstood concepts across the sciences. This chapter seeks to demystify entropy and its main interpretations, along with some of its explorations in the context of cities. It first establishes the foundations of the concept by describing its trajectory since its inception in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in the 19th century, its different incarnations from Boltzmanns pioneering formulation and Shannons information theory to its absorption in biology and the social sciences, until it reaches a nascent urban science in the 1960s. The chapter then identifies some of the main domains in which entropy has been explored to understand cities as complex systems, from entropy-maximizing models of spatial interaction and applications as a measure of urban form, diversity, and complexity to a tool for understanding conditions of self-organization and urban sustainability.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2020

From form to information: Analysing built environments in different spatial cultures

Cities are different around the world, but does this fact have any relation to culture? The idea that urban form embodies idiosyncrasies related to cultural identities captures the imagination of many in urban studies, but it is an assumption yet to be carefully examined. Approaching spatial configurations in the built environment as a proxy of urban culture, this paper searches for differences potentially consistent with specific regional cultures or cultures of planning in urban development. It does so focusing on the elementary components shaping cities: buildings and how they are aggregated in cellular complexes of built form. Exploring Shannon's work, we introduce an entropy measure to analyse the probability distribution of cellular arrangements in built form systems. We apply it to downtown areas of 45 cities from different regions of the world as a similarity measure to compare and cluster cities potentially consistent with specific spatial cultures. Findings suggest a classification scheme that sheds further light on what we call the "cultural hypothesis": the possibility that different cultures and regions find different ways of ordering space.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2019

Assessing Spatial Information in Physical Environments

Many approaches have dealt with the hypothesis that the environment contain information, mostly focusing on how humans decode information from the environment in visual perception, navigation, and spatial decision-making. A question yet to be fully explored is how the built environment could encode forms of information in its own physical structures. This paper explores a new measure of spatial information, and applies it to twenty cities from different spatial cultures and regions of the world. Findings suggest that this methodology is able to identify similarities between cities, generating a classification scheme that opens up new questions about what we call "cultural hypothesis": the idea that spatial configurations find consistent differences between cultures and regions.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2019

On the relation between Transversal and Longitudinal Scaling in Cities

Given that a group of cities follows a scaling law connecting urban population with socio-economic or infrastructural metrics (transversal scaling), should we expect that each city would follow the same behavior over time (longitudinal scaling)? This assumption has important policy implications, although rigorous empirical tests have been so far hindered by the lack of suitable data. Here, we advance the debate by looking into the temporal evolution of the scaling laws for 5507 municipalities in Brazil. We focus on the relationship between population size and two urban variables, GDP and water network length, analyzing the time evolution of the system of cities as well as their individual trajectory. We find that longitudinal (individual) scaling exponents are city-specific, but they are distributed around an average value that approaches to the transversal scaling exponent when the data are decomposed to eliminate external factors, and when we only consider cities with a sufficiently large growth rate. Such results give support to the idea that the longitudinal dynamics is a micro-scaling version of the transversal dynamics of the entire urban system. Finally, we propose a mathematical framework that connects the microscopic level to global behavior, and, in all analyzed cases, we find good agreement between theoretical prediction and empirical evidence.

physics.soc-ph↗