Inventing future cities / Michael Batty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Batty, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cities and towns--Growth.

Cities and towns.

City planning--Technological innovations.

City planning.

Sustainable development.

Technological innovations--Economic aspects.

Technological innovations.

Physical Description:

xviii, 282 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2018]

Summary:

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.

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.0Batty 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.

Contents:

Preface

Predictability, complexity, and inventing the future

The great transition

Defining cities

Form follows function

or does it?

The pulse of the city

Outward, inward, and upward : suburbs to skyscrapers

The sixth Kondratieff : the age of the smart city

The inventive century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-267) and indexes.

ISBN:

9780262038959

0262038951

OCLC:

1029799460