https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200629150548.htm

Studies in the area of conflict research have shown that the risk of conflict is increased when various ethnic groups live in close proximity. So far, however, the effect of this factor on urban development had not been examined directly. Professor Kurt Schmidheiny from the University of Basel has now provided the first empirical proof of this relationship in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Lausanne and the London School of Economics.

On the one hand, the researchers based their analysis on a type of world map showing where various language groups lived in 1975. This allowed them to ascertain the degree of ethnolinguistic diversity of 3,540 provinces in 170 countries at that time. On the other hand, they used a new dataset from the EU and OECD that combines satellite data with population data for the year 2015 in order to define cities around the world as contiguous settlement areas and assign population figures to them.