The Flow Dimension and Capacity for Structuring Urban Street Networks

by Bin Jiang arXiv.org E-print Archive, 12 Sep 2006 This paper proposes a novel concept of flow to measure the efficiency of urban street networks for travel or shipping goods. More specifically, we define two quantities: flow dimension and flow capacity, to characterize structure of urban street networks. To our surprise for the topologies of urban street networks, previously confirmed as a form of small world and scale-free networks, we find that (1) the range of their flow dimension is rather wider than their random and regular counterparts, (2) their flow dimension shows a power-law distribution, and (3) they has a higher flow capacity than their random and regular counterparts. The findings confirm that (1) the wider range of flow dimension and the higher flow capacity both can be a signature of small world networks, and (2) the flow capacity can be an alternative quantity for measuring the efficiency of networks or that of the individual nodes. The findings are illustrated using three urban street networks (two in the Europe and one in the USA), and three other non-spatial networks. We further conjecture that the flow capacity of living organisms is higher than that of static systems. In other words, living organisms are more efficient than static systems. Read more