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

Description

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.

描述

隨著城市規劃從集中式的自上而下方法轉變為分散式的自下而上觀點，我們對城市系統的概念也在改變。在《城市與複雜性》一書中，邁克爾·巴蒂以複雜性理論的背景下，提供了對城市動態的全面觀點，並呈現了能夠將複雜性理論應用於組成有機整體的各種過程和元素的模型。他認為，自下而上的過程（其中結果總是不確定的）可以與與分形模式和混沌動力學相關的新形式的幾何結合，提供適用於城市等高度複雜系統的理論。

巴蒂首先基於元胞自動機（CA）模型，通過自動機的局部行動模擬城市動態。然後，他介紹了基於代理的模型（ABM），其中代理是移動的並在不同位置之間移動。這些模型涉及多個尺度，從街道尺度到城市區域的模式和結構。最後，巴蒂將所有這些模型應用於特定的城市情境，討論了在空間發展的背景下的關鍵性、閾值、驚喜、新奇和相變等概念。書中提出的每個理論和模型都通過從簡化和假設的例子到實際例子的範例來發展。《城市與複雜性》通過大量的視覺、數學和文字材料，既可供城市研究人員閱讀，也可供對新型計算模型感興趣的複雜性理論家閱讀。

書中的示例章節和例子，以及其他相關資料，可在http://www.complexcity.info上找到，點擊左側的連結。