{"id":2902,"date":"2018-06-15T10:41:04","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T08:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/2018\/06\/15\/the-new-science-of-cities\/"},"modified":"2018-06-15T10:41:04","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T08:41:04","slug":"the-new-science-of-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/2018\/06\/15\/the-new-science-of-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Science of Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Designing, planning and managing responsible urbanisation pathways for the many millions of current and future city dwellers is one of the great challenges of our age. What will be the role of the burgeoning science of cities in addressing this challenge?<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To advocates, the new science promises to reveal nothing less than the \u2018laws\u2019 (Bettencourt and West 2010), \u2018hidden universality\u2019 (Schlaepfer, Szell, Ratti and West 2016), \u2018comprehensive structures\u2019 (Batty 2013, 14) or \u2018nature\u2019 of cities and urban systems (Townsend 2015). This could well provide urban planning the \u2018firm scientific footing\u2019 that the precursor science of modernism \u2013 as embodied in the Athens Charter \u2013 promised but did not deliver. The science of cities is already changing the way traffic is planned, pollution monitored, land-uses distributed, and security realised. But the most powerful case for a new scientific approach to cities relates to sustainability and urbanisation debates. As cities are the primary drivers of global warming \u2013 generating the majority of greenhouse gases \u2013 better mechanisms for measuring their effects as well as their compliance to mitigation regulations \u2018help urban areas become the meaningful catalysts for sustainability solutions\u2019 (Solecki, Seto and Marcotullio 2013).<\/p>\n

Big Quality Data<\/h3>\n

Approaching future cities from such a data-fuelled perspective raises the question of accessibility and quality of data. The pervasiveness of information technology and the ability to generate extensive and harmonised data sets are important preconditions for big-data science. If either the quantity or quality of data is compromised, then the capacity for scientific insight is diminished. For example, even in data-rich regions, data is not always available for scientific research purposes. Perhaps data has been generated commercially and has commercial value, or perhaps access creates security risks, or compromises privacy norms. And, of course, there are data-poor regions and areas of society, which are the result of the lack of capacity for data collection or the absence of resilient systems of quality assurance. There are ingenious ways around such problems, ranging from analysing multi-spectral satellite imagery, to crowdsourcing social media data, to agent-based modelling. Yet, it remains true that those parts of the world where the current patterns of urbanisation are most intense, Asia and Africa, are also where data may be absent, quality uncertain or tightly guarded. Special vision and leadership will be required to bring the promise of the new urban science to the regions where it is needed the most.<\/p>\n

Prof. Dr. Stephen Cairns<\/a> is\u00a0FCL Programme Director\u00a0& Principal Investigator of Urban-Rural Systems.
\nAdapted from the essay \u2018Future Cities, Plural\u2019 in Future Cities Lab: Indicia 01<\/i><\/a>.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

References<\/b><\/h4>\n

Batty, Michael (2013). The New Science of Cities<\/i>. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.<\/p>\n

Bettencourt, Luis and Geoffrey West (2010). \u2018A unified theory of urban living\u2019, Nature<\/i> 467, 912\u2013913.<\/p>\n

Schlaepfer, Markus, Markus Szell, Carlo Ratti and Geoffrey West (2016). \u2018The hidden universality of movement in cities\u2019, Conference on Complex Systems (CCS)<\/i>, Amsterdam, 19-22 September.<\/p>\n

Townsend, Anthony (2015). \u2018Cities of data: Examining the new urban science\u2019, Public Culture<\/i> 27 (2): 201-12.<\/p>\n

Solecki, William, Karen C Seto and Peter J Marcotullio (2013). \u2018It\u2019s time for an urbanization science\u2019, Environment Magazine<\/i>. January-February. Available from XXX<\/a>,\u00a0Accessed on 22 November 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Designing, planning and managing responsible urbanisation pathways for the many millions of current and future city dwellers is one of the great challenges of our age. What will be the role of the burgeoning science of cities in addressing this challenge?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"departemente":[138],"newsletter_ausgabe":[294],"class_list":["post-2902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsletter-artikel","departemente-departement-architektur-d-arch","newsletter_ausgabe-nl-38"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":23,"label":"Newsletter-Artikel"}],"departemente":[{"value":138,"label":"Departement Architektur (D-ARCH)"}],"newsletter_ausgabe":[{"value":294,"label":"NL 38"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/Big-data-image-1024x854.jpg",1024,854,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Yaxin Hou","author_link":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/author\/houya\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":23,"name":"Newsletter-Artikel","slug":"newsletter-artikel","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":23,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":680,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":23,"category_count":680,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Newsletter-Artikel","category_nicename":"newsletter-artikel","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"departemente","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/departemente?post=2902"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter_ausgabe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter_ausgabe?post=2902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}