AUTHOR=Bettencourt Luís M. A. , Lobo José TITLE=Quantitative Methods for the Comparative Analysis of Cities in History JOURNAL=Frontiers in Digital Humanities VOLUME=6 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/digital-humanities/articles/10.3389/fdigh.2019.00017 DOI=10.3389/fdigh.2019.00017 ISSN=2297-2668 ABSTRACT=

Comparative studies of cities throughout history are one of the greatest sources of insight into the nature of change in human societies. This paper discusses strategies to anchor these comparisons on well-defined, quantitative and empirical characteristics of cities, derived from theory and observable in the archeological and historical records. We show how quantitative comparisons based on a few simple variables across settlements allow us to analyze how different places and peoples dealt with general problems of any society. These include demographic change, the organization of built spaces, the intensity and size of socioeconomic networks and the processes underlying technological change and economic growth. Because the historical record contains a much more varied and more independent set of experiences than contemporary urbanization, it has a unique power for illuminating present puzzles of human development and testing emergent urban theory.