Cities are often seen as hotspots of violence, with the assumption that larger cities are inherently more violent than smaller ones. This "universal law" of urban scaling has long shaped scientific thinking. But new research led by Complexity Science Hub (CSH) researcher Rafael Prieto-Curiel challenges this assumption. Published in Nature Communications, the study shows that it is not simply city size, but a city's level of isolation, that plays a crucial role in determining violence in Africa.
