Radial analysis and scaling of urban land use

We determine the functional form and scaling law of radial artificial land use profiles in 300 European
functional urban areas (FUAs). These profiles, starting from a fully artificial surface in the city center,
decrease exponentially, the faster the smaller the city. More precisely, the characteristic decrease
distance scales like the square root of total population, meaning that the artificial surface of cities
is proportional to their population. This also means that the amount of artificial land per capita is
independent of city size, and that larger cities are not more or less parsimonious in terms of land use
than smaller ones.