Fractal Cities is the pioneering study of the development and use of fractal geometry for understanding and planning the physical form of cities, showing how this geometry enables cities to be simulated throughcomputer graphics. The book explains how the structure of cities evolve in ways which at first sight may appear irregular, but when understood in terms of fractals reveal a complex and diverse underlying order. The book includes numerous illustrations and 16 pages full-color plates of stunning computer graphics, along with explanations of how to construct them. The authors provide an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to fractal geometry, as well as an exciting visual understanding of the formof cities. This approach, bolstered by new insights into the complexity of social systems, provides one of the best introductions to fractal geometry available for non-mathematicians and social scientists. Fractal Cities is useful as a textbook for courses on geographic information systems, urban geography, regional science, and fractal geometry. Planners and architects will find that many aspects of fractal geometry covered in this book are relevant to their own interests. Those involved in fractals and chaos, computer graphics, and systems theory will also find important methods and examples germane to their work. Michael Batty is Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and analysis in the State University of New York at Buffalo, and has worked in planning theory and urban modeling. Paul Longley is a lecturer in geography at the University of Bristol, and is involved in the development of geographic information systems in urban policy analysis. Richly illustrated, including 16 pages of full-color plates of brilliant computer graphics Provides an introduction to fractal geometry for the non-mathematician and social scientist Explains the influence of fractals on the evolution of the physical form of cities

Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function

Computers & Technology

Batty, Michael

Longley, Paul

Programming

Academic Press

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.

The New Science of Cities

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Mit Pr

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. Batty begins with models based on cellular automata (CA), simulating urban dynamics through the local actions of automata. He then introduces agent-based models (ABM), in which agents are mobile and move between locations. These models relate to many scales, from the scale of the street to patterns and structure at the scale of the urban region. Finally, Batty develops applications of all these models to specific urban situations, discussing concepts of criticality, threshold, surprise, novelty, and phase transition in the context of spatial developments. 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. Sample chapters and examples from the book, and other related material, can be found at http://www.complexcity.info by clicking on the link to the left.

Cities And Complexity: Understanding Cities With Cellular Automata, Agent-based Models, And Fractals

How we can invent―but not predict―the future of cities.
We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems that are more like organisms than machines. Neither the laws of economics nor the laws of mechanics apply; cities are the product of countless individual and collective decisions that do not conform to any grand plan. They are the product of our inventions; they evolve. In Inventing Future Cities, Michael Batty explores what we need to understand about cities in order to invent their future.
Batty outlines certain themes―principles―that apply to all cities. He investigates not the invention of artifacts but inventive processes. Today form is becoming ever more divorced from function; information networks now shape the traditional functions of cities as places of exchange and innovation. By the end of this century, most of the world's population will live in cities, large or small, sometimes contiguous, and always connected; in an urbanized world, it will be increasingly difficult to define a city by its physical boundaries. 
Batty discusses the coming great transition from a world with few cities to a world of all cities; argues that future cities will be defined as clusters in a hierarchy; describes the future “high-frequency,” real-time streaming city; considers urban sprawl and urban renewal; and maps the waves of technological change, which grow ever more intense and lead to continuous innovation―an unending process of creative destruction out of which future cities will emerge.

Inventing Future Cities (Mit Press)

Business & Money

Economics

The MIT Press

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

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

The New Science of Cities (Mit Press)

MIT Press]

How computers simulate cities and how they are also being embedded in cities, changing our behavior and the way in which cities evolve. At every stage in the history of computers and communications, it is safe to say we have been unable to predict what happens next. When computers first appeared nearly seventy-five years ago, primitive computer models were used to help understand and plan cities, but as computers became faster, smaller, more powerful, and ever more ubiquitous, cities themselves began to embrace them. As a result, the smart city emerged. In The Computable City, Michael Batty investigates the circularity of this peculiar evolution- how computers and communications changed the very nature of our city models, which, in turn, are used to simulate systems composed of those same computers. Batty first charts the origins of computers and examines how our computational urban models have developed and how they have been enriched by computer graphics. He then explores the sequence of digital revolutions and how they are converging, focusing on continual changes in new technologies, as well as the twenty-first-century surge in social media, platform economies, and the planning of the smart city. He concludes by revisiting the digital transformation as it continues to confound us, with the understanding that the city, now a high-frequency twenty-four-hour version of itself, changes our understanding of what is possible.

The Computable City: Histories, Technologies, Stories, Predictions

How we can invent--but not predict--the future of cities. We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems that are more like organisms than machines. Neither the laws of economics nor the laws of mechanics apply; cities are the product of countless individual and collective decisions that do not conform to any grand plan. They are the product of our inventions; they evolve. In Inventing Future Cities, Michael Batty explores what we need to understand about cities in order to invent their future. Batty outlines certain themes--principles--that apply to all cities. He investigates not the invention of artifacts but inventive processes. Today form is becoming ever more divorced from function; information networks now shape the traditional functions of cities as places of exchange and innovation. By the end of this century, most of the world's population will live in cities, large or small, sometimes contiguous, and always connected; in an urbanized world, it will be increasingly difficult to define a city by its physical boundaries. Batty discusses the coming great transition from a world with few cities to a world of all cities; argues that future cities will be defined as clusters in a hierarchy; describes the future "high-frequency," real-time streaming city; considers urban sprawl and urban renewal; and maps the waves of technological change, which grow ever more intense and lead to continuous innovation--an unending process of creative destruction out of which future cities will emerge.

Inventing Future Cities

Microcomputer graphics: Art, design, and creative modelling (Chapman and Hall computing)

Software

Chapman and Hall

Urban Modelling: Algorithms, Calibrations, Predictions (Cambridge Urban and Architectural Studies, Series Number 3)

Originally published in 1976, this book introduced a series of mathematical models of urban phenomena relevant to scientists and planners attempting to understand and predict the form of cities and regions. Dr Batty organises the book around the main theme of designing and using such models in practical situations and develops a family of static and dynamic models dealing with the location of land use and economic activities. He describes the models both as urban theories and as computer algorithms, and thoroughly explores the process of calibrating or 'tuning' the models to reflect reality. Problems concerning the definition of the spatial systems to which these models refer are examined, as are other practical difficulties such as data organisation. The quasi-experimental approach which characterises this style of computer model-building extends to using the models in conditional prediction and Dr Batty discusses their role in the planning process, with their use in testing the impact of public policies on existing conditions.

Sociology

Cambridge University Press

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