Mitchell Centre Seminar Series
| Dates: | 5 October 2016 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 16:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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Cities and Networks: Exploring Hierarchy, Form and Function Using Complexity Science
Michael Batty
Bartlett Professor of Planning, UCL
Cities are places where people come together to generate activities that enhance their collective labour and sociality. This implies that networks exist to enable these functions. In the past, cities have been understood mainly from physical networks based on people and material flows while social networks, certainly prior to the electrical age, were harder to observe but nevertheless still measurable. As the information age has accelerated, cities have got ever more complex with multiple layers being generated, all interacting with one another and providing possibilities of chaotic as well as unanticipated cascades of good and bad events. On top of these, with the introduction of sensors and computers into control of networks, real time streams of flow and related data is becoming available. In this talk I will outline how we are getting to grips in larger cities with such networks, illustrating them with respect to RFID access to transit systems, networks based on social media, and mobile phone traffic. I will illustrate work from our Oyster Card project in London, from various social media measures, and from the use of street networks to determine clusters and fractures which form localities, regions and nations within which we define the system of cities.
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4.8
Roscoe Building
Manchester
