City highway networks and brain wiring follow similar laws, yet both designed without a master planner
City highway networks follow the same deep scaling laws that brains do, from older work of mine.
In both cases there is no master planner, but they discover the same solution.
You can read about it by linking to the paper…
https://www.changizi.com/uploads/8/3/4/4/83445868/citybrain.pdf
To clarify, based on a comment below… Issue is, How does it happen that all these cities conform to the same scaling law that applies over several orders of magnitude? It’s not because they purposely set out to follow the scaling law. Rather, it’s that the scaling law emerges from hundreds of cities individually locally planning.
Same goes for evolution: genes in your head plan your brain. But the scaling laws — law-like master-plan-like patterns we find across brains varying many of orders of magnitude in size — emerge from natural selection processes.
I admit I didn't read the article so maybe I don't understand the comparison but I'd say that City Highway Networks aren't made without any master planner. In cities the highway system is expanded over time, it's not all built at once before use but each time any major expansion of the existing system is made there is a lot of master planning involved, far more than most people realize. voluntarily sell. Not only are they planning how to implement the new expansion but they also have to factor into that future expansions because eventually the existing expansion will need expanding.
Also. doesn't brain pathways work based on the most efficient route? I can tell you "most efficient" is rarely a factor in planning and expanding of city highway systems.