Open Educational Resources | Pao Yue-kong Library, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Video

PAIR distinguished lecture series : developing a science of cities

In the lecture, Prof. Batty gave an overview of the development of the science of cities in the last 50 years. Drawing on the system approach and complex theory, he explained that urban science involves top-down and bottom-up thinking; it is a systematic, complex and evolving discipline built on knowledge in social physics, economics, transportation and numerous scientific methods that yield theories. He illustrated this with city morphology examples from the UK and the Greater Bay Areas (GBA) generated by large-scale computer models. At the end of the lecture, Prof. Batty described some challenges with fractal geometry, size and scaling, networks, and building models currently faced by the field, and he suggested the way forward for the discipline.
Even date: 01/09/2023
Speaker: Prof. Michael Batty
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research

Subjects:: Building and Real Estate
Keywords:: City planning City planning -- Data processing
Resource Type:: Video

e-book

Urban informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity.