title: Memory-endowed US cities and their demographic interactions.
abstract: A quantitative understanding of cities' demographic dynamics is becoming a potentially useful tool for planning sustainable growth. The concomitant theory should reveal details of the cities' past and also of its interaction with nearby urban conglomerates for providing a reasonably complete picture. Using the exhaustive database of the Census Bureau in a time window of 170 years, we exhibit here empirical evidence for time and space correlations in the demographic dynamics of US counties, with a characteristic memory time of 25 years and typical distances of interaction of 200 km. These correlations are much larger than those observed in a European country (Spain), indicating more coherent evolution in US cities. We also measure the resilience of US cities to historical events, finding a demographical post-traumatic amnesia after wars (such as the American Civil War) or economic crisis (such as the 1929 Stock Market Crash).
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hernando
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hernando
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Plastino
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zambrano
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D003710:Demography / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D005843:Geography; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D013269:Stochastic Processes; D013997:Time Factors; D014481:United States; D014505:Urban Population