The Dynamics of Complex Urban Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach

by Sergio Albeverio (Editor), Denise Andrey (Editor), Paolo Giordano (Editor)

In recent years it has become increasingly clear that the dynamics of cities can be best captured by looking at them as complex systems governed by many degrees of freedom, interacting on different space and time scales in a non-linear fashion. The evolution of cities is shaped by internal factors, e. g. decisions taken by ins- tutions and individuals, external causes (international economic context) and by social development. The underlying processes can be slow or fast, acting locally or globally. At a different level, both European cities and megacities are magnets for immigrants (e. g. countries, which have major economical and political pr- lems), leading often to phenomena like marginalization or even ghettization and segregation. They are also hotbeds of economic, political and cultural activity, giving rise, among other things, to relocation and conversion of industries, - valuation of land, and development of new services. These phenomena as quali- tive changes, are opposed to purely quantitative growth processes. They are far from being fully understood, nor they are captured in validated and complete - ban models. For most of urban theory hitherto has been based on the assumption of slowly varying spatial and social structures. Only recently, these assumptions have been questioned, giving rise to models employing dissipative dynamics, s- chastic cellular automata and multi-agent models, fractal geometry, and evoluti- ary change models, and to further mathematically oriented approaches.

Kindle Edition

First published December 6, 2007

About the author

Sergio Albeverio (born 17 January 1939) is a Swiss mathematician and mathematical physicist working in numerous fields of mathematics and its applications. In particular he is known for his work in probability theory, analysis (including infinite dimensional, non-standard, and stochastic analysis), mathematical physics, and in the areas algebra, geometry, number theory, as well as in applications, from natural to social-economic sciences.

He initiated (with Raphael Høegh-Krohn) a systematic mathematical theory of Feynman path integrals and of infinite dimensional Dirichlet forms and associated stochastic processes (with applications particularly in quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and quantum field theory). He also gave essential contributions to the development of areas such as p-adic functional and stochastic analysis as well as to the singular perturbation theory for differential operators. Other important contributions concern constructive quantum field theory and representation theory of infinite dimensional groups. He also initiated a new approach to the study of galaxy and planets formation inspired by stochastic mechanics.

Reviews

[S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was there mainly for Batty, whom I consider to be the father of urban models. It's a rich recueil of contributions across disciplines (related to urban planning that is) - theory, planning, models and specifics : transport - mobility - aggregations - etc...
It's epic how when all of this seemed novel then, scarce were direct applications of these models. Although the first idea we had of these models captured an erroneous conception of urban planning - considering it to be stochastic and reach an equilibrium which is not the case, their contribution to city science is meaningful and better than none!
But one has to keep in mind one thing related to complexity : it's not because there are many agents interacting in the urban sphere, or because of the huge amount of data required to understand these mechanisms (those would be complicated not complex) - but it's because the interaction is non-linear and doesn't depend on initial conditions somewhere between randomness, chaos and order.
So many times you might apply the same policy guidelines in the same city and yet end up with different output ...
What's interesting and noteworthy is the naiveté with which planning is being taught: History is a good case study but isn't enough for urban planners. Cities require not multidisciplinary but transdisciplinarity / interdisciplinarity ...
Throw back to when I justified urban planning decisions based on mediocre descriptions on the urban morphology poorly restated straight out of Panerai ... Or worse : La Charte d'Athènes (SHAME) ...