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

"Michael Batty provides a powerful new way of thinking about cities in terms of cells and agents, demonstrating 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"

This work views urban dynamics in the context of complexity theory; models and examples in scales from the local to the regional.As urban planning moves from a centralized, top-down approach to a decentralized, bottom-up perspective, our conception of urban systems is changing. In "Cities and Complexity", Michael Batty offers a comprehensive view of urban dynamics in the context of complexity theory, presenting models that demonstrate how complexity theory can embrace a myriad of processes and elements that combine into organic wholes. He argues that bottom-up processes - in which the outcomes are always uncertain - can combine with new forms of geometry associated with fractal patterns and chaotic dynamics to provide theories that are applicable to highly complex systems such as cities.Every theory and model presented in the book is developed through examples that range from the simplified and hypothetical to the actual. Deploying extensive visual, mathematical, and textual material, Cities and Complexity will be read both by urban researchers and by complexity theorists with an interest in new kinds of computational models.