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.
Event date: 01/09/2023
Speaker: Prof. Michael Batty
Hosted by: PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research