Download or read book Introduction to Urban Science written by Luis M. A. Bettencourt and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel, integrative approach to cities as complex adaptive systems, applicable to issues ranging from innovation to economic prosperity to settlement patterns. Human beings around the world increasingly live in urban environments. In Introduction to Urban Science, Luis Bettencourt takes a novel, integrative approach to understanding cities as complex adaptive systems, claiming that they require us to frame the field of urban science in a way that goes beyond existing theory in such traditional disciplines as sociology, geography, and economics. He explores the processes facilitated by and, in many cases, unleashed for the first time by urban life through the lenses of social heterogeneity, complex networks, scaling, circular causality, and information. Though the idea that cities are complex adaptive systems has become mainstream, until now those who study cities have lacked a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding cities and urbanization, for generating useful and falsifiable predictions, and for constructing a solid body of empirical evidence so that the discipline of urban science can continue to develop. Bettencourt applies his framework to such issues as innovation and development across scales, human reasoning and strategic decision-making, patterns of settlement and mobility and their influence on socioeconomic life and resource use, inequality and inequity, biodiversity, and the challenges of sustainable development in both high- and low-income nations. It is crucial, says Bettencourt, to realize that cities are not "zero-sum games" and that knowledge, human cooperation, and collective action can build a better future.

Download or read book The New Science of Cities written by Michael Batty and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal for a new way to understand cities and their design not as artifacts but as systems composed of flows and networks. In The New Science of Cities, Michael Batty suggests that to understand cities we must view them not simply as places in space but as systems of networks and flows. To understand space, he argues, we must understand flows, and to understand flows, we must understand networks—the relations between objects that compose the system of the city. Drawing on the complexity sciences, social physics, urban economics, transportation theory, regional science, and urban geography, and building on his own previous work, Batty introduces theories and methods that reveal the deep structure of how cities function. Batty presents the foundations of a new science of cities, defining flows and their networks and introducing tools that can be applied to understanding different aspects of city structure. He examines the size of cities, their internal order, the transport routes that define them, and the locations that fix these networks. He introduces methods of simulation that range from simple stochastic models to bottom-up evolutionary models to aggregate land-use transportation models. Then, using largely the same tools, he presents design and decision-making models that predict interactions and flows in future cities. These networks emphasize a notion with relevance for future research and planning: that design of cities is collective action.

Download or read book Climate Change and U S Cities written by William D. Solecki and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approximately 80% of the U.S. population now lives in urban metropolitan areas, and this number is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. At the same time, the built infrastructure sustaining these populations has become increasingly vulnerable to climate change. Stresses to existing systems, such as buildings, energy, transportation, water, and sanitation are growing. If the status quo continues, these systems will be unable to support a high quality of life for urban residents over the next decades, a vulnerability exacerbated by climate change impacts. Understanding this dilemma and identifying a path forward is particularly important as cities are becoming leading agents of climate action. Prepared as a follow-up to the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA), Climate Change and U.S. Cities documents the current understanding of existing and future climate risk for U.S. cities, urban systems, and the residents that depend on them. Beginning with an examination of the existing science since 2012, chapters develop connections between existing and emerging climate risk, adaptation planning, and the role of networks and organizations in facilitating climate action in cities. From studies revealing disaster vulnerability among low-income populations to the development of key indicators for tracking climate change, this is an essential, foundational analysis. Importantly, the assessment puts a critical emphasis on the cross-cutting factors of economics, equity, and governance. Urban stakeholders and decision makers will come away with a full picture of existing climate risks and a set of conclusions and recommendations for action. Many cities in the United States still have not yet planned for climate change and the costs of inaction are great. With bold analysis, Climate Change and U.S. Cities reveals the need for action and the tools that cities must harness to effect decisive, meaningful change.

Download or read book Urban Systems Design written by Yoshiki Yamagata and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban Systems Design: Creating Sustainable Smart Cities in the Internet of Things Era shows how to design, model and monitor smart communities using a distinctive IoT-based urban systems approach. Focusing on the essential dimensions that constitute smart communities energy, transport, urban form, and human comfort, this helpful guide explores how IoT-based sharing platforms can achieve greater community health and well-being based on relationship building, trust, and resilience. Uncovering the achievements of the most recent research on the potential of IoT and big data, this book shows how to identify, structure, measure and monitor multi-dimensional urban sustainability standards and progress. This thorough book demonstrates how to select a project, which technologies are most cost-effective, and their cost-benefit considerations. The book also illustrates the financial, institutional, policy and technological needs for the successful transition to smart cities, and concludes by discussing both the conventional and innovative regulatory instruments needed for a fast and smooth transition to smart, sustainable communities. Provides operational case studies and best practices from cities throughout Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Australia, and Africa, providing instructive examples of the social, environmental, and economic aspects of “smartification Reviews assessment and urban sustainability certification systems such as LEED, BREEAM, and CASBEE, examining how each addresses smart technologies criteria Examines existing technologies for efficient energy management, including HEMS, BEMS, energy harvesting, electric vehicles, smart grids, and more

Download or read book Planning Support Systems for Cities and Regions written by Richard K. Brail and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Editor Richard K. Brail has brought together the wisest of the field's thinkers, the most inventive of the toolmakers, the most experienced of those working at the interface with real clients, and the most battle-seasoned practicing planners (and many of these individuals occupy more than one of these niches). Together they present a broad view of support systems, in-depth developmental histories of the most important models and tools as told by their creators, and a provocative, in-the-trenches critique of the state of the art.

Download or read book Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age written by Juval Portugali and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-03 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, our cities are an embodiment of the complex, historical evolution of knowledge, desires and technology. Our planned and designed activities co-evolve with our aspirations, mediated by the existing technologies and social structures. The city represents the accretion and accumulation of successive layers of collective activity, structuring and being structured by other, increasingly distant cities, reaching now right around the globe. This historical and structural development cannot therefore be understood or captured by any set of fixed quantitative relations. Structural changes imply that the patterns of growth, and their underlying reasons change over time, and therefore that any attempt to control the morphology of cities and their patterns of flow by means of planning and design, must be dynamical, based on the mechanisms that drive the changes occurring at a given moment. This carefully edited post-proceedings volume gathers a snapshot view by leading researchers in field, of current complexity theories of cities. In it, the achievements, criticisms and potentials yet to be realized are reviewed and the implications to planning and urban design are assessed.

Download or read book Modeling Cities and Regions as Complex Systems written by Roger White and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory and practice of modeling cities and regions as complex, self-organizing systems, presenting widely used cellular automata-based models, theoretical discussions, and applications. Cities and regions grow (or occasionally decline), and continuously transform themselves as they do so. This book describes the theory and practice of modeling the spatial dynamics of urban growth and transformation. As cities are complex, adaptive, self-organizing systems, the most appropriate modeling framework is one based on the theory of self-organizing systems—an approach already used in such fields as physics and ecology. The book presents a series of models, most of them developed using cellular automata (CA), which are inherently spatial and computationally efficient. It also provides discussions of the theoretical, methodological, and philosophical issues that arise from the models. A case study illustrates the use of these models in urban and regional planning. Finally, the book presents a new, dynamic theory of urban spatial structure that emerges from the models and their applications. The models are primarily land use models, but the more advanced ones also show the dynamics of population and economic activities, and are integrated with models in other domains such as economics, demography, and transportation. The result is a rich and realistic representation of the spatial dynamics of a variety of urban phenomena. The book is unique in its coverage of both the general issues associated with complex self-organizing systems and the specifics of designing and implementing models of such systems.

Download or read book OECD Urban Studies Cities in the World A New Perspective on Urbanisation written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities are not only home to around half of the global population but also major centers of economic activity and innovation. Yet, so far there has been no consensus of what a city really is. Substantial differences in the way cities, metropolitan, urban, and rural areas are defined across countries hinder robust international comparisons and an accurate monitoring of SDGs. The report Cities in the World: A New Perspective on Urbanisation addresses this void and provides new insights on urbanisation by applying for the first time two new definitions of human settlements to the entire globe: the Degree of Urbanisation and the Functional Urban Area.

Download or read book Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities written by Stan Geertman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a selection of the best and peer-reviewed articles presented at the CUPUM (Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management) conference, held in the second week of July 2015 at MIT in Boston, USA. The contributions provide state-of the art overview of the availability and application of Planning Support Systems (PSS) in the framework of Smart Cities.

Download or read book City systems in Advanced Economies written by Allan Pred and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1977. This book provides answers to two fundamental and interrelated questions about the modern city. First, what are the processes underlying the past and present growth of ‘post-industrial’ metropolitan complexes and the economically advanced city-systems to which they belong? Second, what are the implications of on-going growth for efforts to reduce interregional inequalities of employment opportunity? The first section of the book introduces the basic concepts such as the properties of systems of cities. It then provides an analysis of their growth in advanced economies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and looks to further possibilities.

Download or read book Cities and Agriculture written by Henk de Zeeuw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As people increasingly migrate to urban settings and more than half of the world's population now lives in cities, it is vital to plan and provide for sustainable and resilient food systems which reflect this challenge. This volume presents experience and evidence-based "state of the art" chapters on the key dimensions of urban food challenges and types of intra- and peri-urban agriculture. The book provides urban planners, local policy makers and urban development practitioners with an overview of crucial aspects of urban food systems based on an up to date review of research results and practical experiences in both developed and developing countries. By doing so, the international team of authors provides a balanced textbook for students of the growing number of courses on sustainable agriculture, food and urban studies, as well as a solid basis for well-informed policy making, planning and implementation regarding the development of sustainable, resilient and just urban food systems.

Download or read book The Structure and Dynamics of Cities written by Marc Barthelemy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a modern and interdisciplinary perspective on cities that combines new data with tools from statistical physics and urban economics.

Download or read book Handbook of Cities and Networks written by Neal, Zachary P. and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-31 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook of Cities and Networks provides a cutting-edge overview of research on how economic, social and transportation networks affect processes both in and between cities. Exploring the ways in which cities connect and intertwine, it offers a varied set of collaborations, highlighting different theoretical, historical and methodological perspectives.

Download or read book Urban Systems and Historical Path dependence written by W. Brian Arthur and published by . This book was released on 198? with total page 11 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Systems of Cities written by William Alonso and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Interpreting the City written by Truman A. Hartshorn and published by . This book was released on 1980-03-25 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, thoroughly researched introduction that blends social-behavioral and historical-evolutionary approaches with a more traditional economic-principles orientation, providing a balanced and current treatment of city systems and the internal structure of the city. Includes growth and functions of systems, physical environment and perception of the city, change, urban growth policy, and the future. Follows a logical and comprehensive sequence of topics, with emphasis on North American cities. Heavily referenced; includes 100 detailed maps, 150 graphs and charts, and 30 photographs. Appendices discuss census definitions, quantitative and statistical techniques, and manufacturing classifications.

Download or read book Urban Growth and City Systems in the United States 1840 1860 written by Allan Pred and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1980 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major new work of urban geography, Allan Pred interprets the process by which major cities grew and the entire city-system of the United States developed during the antebellum decades. The book focuses on the availability and distribution of crucial economic information. For as cities developed, this information helped determine the new urban areas in which business opportunities could be exploited and productive innovations implemented. Pred places this original approach to urbanization in the context of earlier, more conventional studies, and he supports his view by a wealth of evidence regarding the flow of commodities between major cities. He also draws on an analysis of newspaper circulation, postal services, business travel, and telegraph usage. Pred's book goes far beyond the usual "biographies" of individual cities or the specialized studies of urban life. It offers a large and fascinating view of the way an entire city-system was put together and made to function. Indeed, by providing the first full account of these two decades of American urbanization, Pred has supplied a vital and hitherto missing link in the history of the United States.