Natural flow patterns and structured people dynamics: a constructal view

Abstract

Constructal theory that has been successfully applied to planetary circulations and climate and to river basin morphology is shown to provide a useful framework for describing flows of people. We showed here, with simple examples, that intuitive rules of traffic organization can be anticipated based on principle, i.e., based on the Constructal Law. In addition, and similarly to the case of flows of inanimate matter, in the case of flows of people, flow patterns emerge as a necessary consequence of reduction of global flow resistances. These flow patterns point to decreasing resistivity to flows of people and commodities. Pathway length varies inversely with resistivity while pathway number increases with resistivity.