BBC:
A study of the world’s largest subway networks has revealed that they are remarkably mathematically similar.
The layouts seem to converge over time to a similar structure regardless of where or over how long they were built.
The study, in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, analysed 14 subway networks around the world.
It found common distributions of stations within the networks, as well as common proportions of the numbers of lines, stations, and total distances.
Later in the story:
“Although these (networks) might appear to be planned in some centralised manner, it is our contention here that subway systems like many other features of city systems evolve and self-organise themselves as the product of a stream of rational but usually uncoordinated decisions taking place through time,” they wrote.
I love how this seems to point to a kind of global logic or mind. The subway system begins with the particular (a given city)
…and slowly evolves into the universal (the truly global city, the terminal point of humanity).
