Batty, M;
(2017)
Cities in Disequilibrium.
In: Johnson, J and Nowak, A and Ormerod, P and Rosewell, B and Zhang, YC, (eds.)
Non-Equilibrium Social Science and Policy Introduction and Essays on New and Changing Paradigms in Socio-Economic Thinking.
(pp. 81-96).
Springer: Cham, Switzerland.
Preview |
Text
Batty2017_Chapter_CitiesInDisequilibrium.pdf - Published Version Download (435kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Our perceptions of cities until quite recently were that they were largely stable in spatial structure over long periods of time, decades, even centuries, and that this suggested that they were in equilibrium. Cities appeared similar from generation to generation and although there were superficial changes due to fashion and technology, their overall structures were unchanging. To a large extent, this view of cities in equilibrium is borne of thinking about them physically but as soon as we unpack their dynamics, we realise that this a superficial perception. Cities are always in disequilibrium. They are in fact far-from-equilibrium being maintained through a tension of many countervailing forces that break down and build up on many different spatial and temporal scales, thus all coalescing in strong volatility and heterogeneity in urban form and function. Here we first review the concept of equilibrium and dynamics, and then we introduce ideas about discontinuity drawing on ideas from catastrophe and chaos theory. We argue that we should think of cities as being far-from-equilibrium structures and allude to ideas about innovation and technological change that condition their dynamic entirely. Our conclusion is that what happens in cities is increasingly disconnected from their physical form and this is particularly the case in the contemporary world where changes to the built environment are ever out-of-sync with changes in human behaviours, activity locations, patterns of movement, and globalisation.
| Type: | Book chapter |
|---|---|
| Title: | Cities in Disequilibrium |
| ISBN: | 3319424246 |
| ISBN-13: | 9783319424248 |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/978-3-319-42424-8_6 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42424-8_6 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2017. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, a link is provided to the Creative Commons license and any changes made are indicated. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the work's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if such material is not included in the work's Creative Commons license and the respective action is not permitted by statutory regulation, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to duplicate, adapt or reproduce the material. |
| Keywords: | Physical Form, Urban System, Central Business District, Catastrophe Theory, Cusp Catastrophe |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10060768 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
