Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models, and Fractals - Softcover

Batty, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262524791 ISBN 13: 9780262524797

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2007

Synopsis

Mario Carpo provides a subtle and insightful discussion of the intellectual structures that guide architectural composition and the ways that these structures were transformed by the historic shifts from script to print and from hand-made drawings to mechanically reproduced images. He goes on to suggest that the current shift from print to digital representations will have similarly profound consequences. This is a crucial text for anyone interested in the interrelationships of media and design processes.William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences, MIT

About this title

About the Author

Michael Batty is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London and the author of Cities and Complexity and The New Science of Cities, both published by the MIT Press.

Review

Batty is a master at presenting challenging material in 'gentle though rigorous' ways, judiciously combining text, graphics, and notation, and moving from easy-to-grasp toy problems to real examples.

―Helen Couclelis, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara (Endorsement)

Cities and Complexity unites into an integrated whole pathbreaking urban research centered on methods of nonlinear dynamic emergence and self-organization. This book will be an ideal text for advanced students of urban systems and an invaluable guide for their instructors, as well as for practitioners who seek to simulate alternative futures.

―Brian J.L. Berry, Lloyd Viel Berkner Regental Professor and Dean of the School of Social Science, University of Texas at Dallas (Endorsement)

Michael Batty provides a powerful new way of thinking about cities in terms of cells and agents, demosntrating how highly organized spatial patterns can emerge from surprisingly simple rules and processes. His many beautiful, meticulously developed examples provide fascinating insights into the evolution of urban forms, and will serve as wonderful starting points for further research.

―William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences, MIT (Endorsement)

In this book Batty clearly demonstrates that decentrailzed, local spatial processes can produce complex patterns of urban dynamics that are both visually arresting and scientifically compelling. The novelty of the book is that it blends cellular automata and agent-based models, making it of interest to anyone concerned with spatial social science―geographers, economists, environmental scientists, urban sociologsts, international relations scholars, planners, and policy specialists. More broadly, the book will be a definitive addition to the emerging field of computational social science.

―Robert L. Axtell, Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, The Brookings Institution (Endorsement)

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0262524791
• ISBN 13: 9780262524797
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 592