Categories
Urban

New Article: Complexity in Urban Form and Design

My article, Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design, is now in-press for publication at Urban Design International (download free PDF). Cities are complex systems composed of many human agents interacting in physical urban space. This paper develops a typology of measures and indicators for assessing the physical complexity of the built environment at the scale of urban design. It extends quantitative measures from city planning, network science, ecosystems studies, fractal geometry, statistical physics, and information theory to the analysis of urban form and qualitative human experience.

The Mandelbrot set, a mathematical fractal. Venice's fractal urban form and fabric. The Eiffel Tower's fractal architecture in Paris.

Categories
Planning

Urban Design and Complexity

Corbusier Paris planI am presenting at the 2015 Conference on Complex Systems tomorrow in Tempe, Arizona. My paper is on methods for assessing the complexity of urban design. If you’re attending the conference, come on by!

Here’s the paper.

Here’s the abstract: