Abstract
AMONG the obvious motives of mankind are the tendencies to seek company and to seek living–space. If we were to regard these tendencies as being in simple opposition to one another, we should expect the population to be able to remain uniformly spread over any uniform piece of land; and the familiar contrast between town and country would then appear, to the theoretical mind, as a mystery requiring explanation. We may, however, seek a hint as to why people concentrate into towns from Sir James Jeans's theory of why matter concentrates into stars1. For his theory is also concerned with two opposing tendencies: to draw together by mutual gravitation and to spread out by pressure.
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References
Jeans, Sir James, "Astronomy and Cosmogony" (Camb. Univ. Press, 1929).
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RICHARDSON, L. Mathematical Theory of Population Movement. Nature 148, 784 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148784a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148784a0
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