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Najem S, Krayem A, Ala-Nissila T, et al. Kinetic roughening of the urban skyline. Phys Rev E. 2020;101(5):050301doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.101.050301.
Najem, S., Krayem, A., Ala-Nissila, T., & Grant, M. (2020). Kinetic roughening of the urban skyline. Physical review. E, 101(5), 050301. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.050301
Najem, Sara, et al. "Kinetic roughening of the urban skyline." Physical review. E vol. 101,5 (2020): 050301. doi: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.050301
Najem S, Krayem A, Ala-Nissila T, Grant M. Kinetic roughening of the urban skyline. Phys Rev E. 2020 May;101(5):050301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.101.050301. PMID: 32575232.
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Phys Rev E. 2020 May;101(5):050301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.101.050301.

Kinetic roughening of the urban skyline.

Physical review. E

Sara Najem, Alaa Krayem, Tapio Ala-Nissila, Martin Grant

Affiliations

  1. Physics Department, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
  2. Department of Applied Physics and QTF Center of Excellence, Aalto University, P.O. Box 11000, FI-00076 Aalto, Espoo, Finland.
  3. Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical Modelling, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, United Kingdom.
  4. Physics Department, Rutherford Building, 3600 rue University, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 2T8.

PMID: 32575232 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.101.050301

Abstract

We analyze the morphology of the modern urban skyline in terms of its roughness properties. This is facilitated by a database of 10^{7} building heights in cities throughout the Netherlands which allows us to compute the asymptotic height difference correlation function in each city. We find that in cities for which the height correlations display power-law scaling as a function of distance between the buildings, the corresponding roughness exponents are commensurate to the Edwards-Wilkinson and Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equations for kinetic roughening. Based on analogy to discrete deposition models, we argue that these two limiting classes emerge because of possible height restriction rules for buildings in some cities.

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