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The CASA Blog Network

The latest outputs from researchers, alumni and friends at the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA).

    The CASA Blog Network

    Author: Quaestio

    33: On writing

    Posted on Wednesday 2 December 2015 by Quaestio

    Research has to be ‘written up’. To some, writing comes easily – though I suspect this is on the basis of learning through experience. To many, especially research students at the time of thesis writing, it seems like a mountain … Continue reading →

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    31: Too many journals, too many conferences?

    Posted on Wednesday 2 December 2015 by Quaestio

    Journals and conferences are certainly proliferating. I receive e-mails weekly inviting me to submit papers to new journals and daily inviting me to sign up for conferences. These are virtually all related to commercial profit-making enterprises rather than from, say, … Continue reading →

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    32: DNA

    Posted on Wednesday 2 December 2015 by Quaestio

    The idea of ‘DNA’ has become a commonplace metaphor. The real DNA is the genetic code that underpins the development of organisms. I find the idea useful in thinking about the development of – the evolution of – cities. This … Continue reading →

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    30: Sledgehammers for wicked problems

    Posted on Thursday 26 November 2015 by Quaestio

    There are many definitions of ‘wicked problems’ – first characterised by Rittel and Webber in the 1970s – try googling to explore. However, essentially, they are problems that are well known, difficult and that governments of all colours have attempted … Continue reading →

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    R and D policy (7), Real Challenges (6)

    29: Universities in the not-too-distant future

    Posted on Thursday 19 November 2015 by Quaestio

    Will universities look different in 25 or 50 years’ time? I think at least some will, perhaps all. There will be new imperatives for successful countries and regions, and universities can play a crucial role. It is commonplace to say … Continue reading →

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    R and D policy (6)

    28: The brain as a model

    Posted on Thursday 12 November 2015 by Quaestio

    An important part of my intellectual toolkit has been Stafford Beer’s book Brain of the firm, published in 1972. Stafford Beer was a larger than life character who was a major figure in operational research, cybernetics, general systems theory and … Continue reading →

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    R and D policy (6)

    27: Beware of optimisation

    Posted on Thursday 5 November 2015 by Quaestio

    The idea of ‘optimisation’ is basic to lots of things we do and to how we think. When driving from A to B, what is the optimum route? When we learn calculus for the first time, we quickly come to … Continue reading →

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    How to do research (11), Urban Modelling (9)

    26: Time Management

    Posted on Thursday 29 October 2015 by Quaestio

    When I was Chair of AHRC, I occasionally attended small meetings of academics who we were consulting about various issues – our version of focus groups. On one occasion, we were expecting comments – even complaints – about various AHRC … Continue reading →

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    Autobiographical (9)

    25: Spinning Out 2

    Posted on Thursday 22 October 2015 by Quaestio

    Why spin out? There are a number of possible motivations ranging from money – supplementing income, for self and/or department – to the more altruistic – offering people or organisations outside the university something valuable to them. Possibly both. This … Continue reading →

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    R and D policy (4)

    24: Spinning Out 1

    Posted on Thursday 15 October 2015 by Quaestio

    I estimate that once every two years for the last 20 or 30 years, there has been a report of an inquiry into the transfer of university research into the economy – for commercial or public benefits. The fact that … Continue reading →

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    Autobiographical (9), R and D policy (3)

    23: Missing Data

    Posted on Thursday 8 October 2015 by Quaestio

    All the talk of ‘big data’ sometimes carries the implication that we must now surely have all the data that we need. However, frequently, crucial data is ‘missing’. This can then be seen as inhibiting research: ‘can’t work on that … Continue reading →

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    Autobiographical (8), Urban Modelling (8)

    22: Requisite Knowledge

    Posted on Friday 2 October 2015 by Quaestio

    W Ross Ashby was a psychiatrist who, through books such as Design for a brain, was one of the pioneers of the development of systems theory (qv) in the 1950s. A particular branch of systems theory was ‘cybernetics’ – from … Continue reading →

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    How to do research (10)

    21: Research Priorities: A modeller’s perspective

    Posted on Monday 3 August 2015 by Quaestio

    (From the Urban transformations website) We know a lot about cities, but there is much more that we need to know to meet future challenges effectively. My aim here is to sketch some research priorities from the perspective of the … Continue reading →

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    20: Back to the future – Bradford trams

    Posted on Thursday 16 July 2015 by Quaestio

    This is the twentieth blog in this weekly series and after this there will be a summer break – a restart in October all being well! Trams have a long history in British cities and are now being re-invented for … Continue reading →

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    19: Territories and flows

    Posted on Thursday 9 July 2015 by Quaestio

    Territories are defined by boundaries at scales ranging from countries and indeed alliances of countries) to neighbourhoods via regions and cities. These may be government or administrative boundaries, some formal, some less so; or they may be socially defined as … Continue reading →

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    18: Against oblivion

    Posted on Friday 3 July 2015 by Quaestio

    I was at school in the 1950s – Queen Elizabeth Grammar School Darlington – with Ian Hamilton. He went on to Oxford and became a significant and distinguished poet, critic, writer and editor – notable, perhaps, for shunning academia and … Continue reading →

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    17: Equations with names: the importance of Lotka and Volterra (and Tolstoy?)

    Posted on Tuesday 23 June 2015 by Quaestio

    The most famous equations with names – in one case by universal association – seem to come from physics: Newton’s Law of Gravity – the gravitational force between two objects is proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the … Continue reading →

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    16: New maths needed

    Posted on Thursday 18 June 2015 by Quaestio

    In the modern era, mathematical and computer models of cities have been in development for around sixty years – not surprisingly, mirroring the growth of computing power. Much has been achieved. We are pretty good at modelling the flows of … Continue reading →

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    15: Venturing into other disciplines

    Posted on Friday 12 June 2015 by Quaestio

    Urban and regional science – a discipline or a subdiscipline, or is it still called interdisciplinary? – has been good at welcoming people from other disciplines, notably in recent times, physicists. Can we venture outside our box? It would be … Continue reading →

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    14: Learning from history

    Posted on Thursday 4 June 2015 by Quaestio

    I was recruited to a post that was the start of my urban modelling career in the Autumn of 1964 by Christopher Foster (now Sir Christopher) to work on the cost-benefit analysis of major transport projects. My job was to … Continue reading →

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    ‘Research on’ versus ‘research for’

    Posted on Thursday 28 May 2015 by Quaestio

    Let us begin by asserting that any piece of research is concerned with a ‘system of interest’ – henceforth ‘the system’ (cf. Systems thinking). We can then make a distinction between the ‘science of the system’ and the ‘applied science … Continue reading →

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    12: Excellence

    Posted on Thursday 21 May 2015 by Quaestio

    I was Chair of the Arts and Humanities Research Council for 6 years up to December 2013. Like the other research councils, and like most universities, we always said that we funded research that is ‘excellent’ and ‘world class’. However, … Continue reading →

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    11: Real challenges

    Posted on Thursday 14 May 2015 by Quaestio

    One route into urban research is to reflect on the well known and very real challenges that cities face. The most obvious ones can be classified as ‘wicked problems’ in that they have been known for a long time, usually … Continue reading →

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    10: Adding depth: a ‘CERN’ for urban science

    Posted on Thursday 7 May 2015 by Quaestio

    An appropriate ambition of the model-building component of urban science is the construction of the best possible comprehensive model which represents the interdependencies that make cities complex (and interesting) systems. To articulate this is to spell out a kind of … Continue reading →

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    9: Combinatorial Evolution

    Posted on Thursday 30 April 2015 by Quaestio

    Brian Arthur introduced a new and important idea in his book The nature of technology: that of ‘combinatorial evolution’. The argument, put perhaps overly briefly, is essentially this: a ‘technology’, an aeroplane say, can be thought of as a system, … Continue reading →

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    8: Interdisciplinarity

    Posted on Friday 24 April 2015 by Quaestio

    Systems thinking (see earlier entry) drives us to interdisciplinarity: we need to know everything about a system of interest and that means anything and everything that any relevant discipline can contribute. For almost any social science system of interest, there … Continue reading →

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    7: Following Fashion

    Posted on Friday 17 April 2015 by Quaestio

    Much research follows the current fashion. This leads me to develop an argument around two questions. How does ‘fashion’ come about? How should we respond to it? I begin by reflecting on my personal experience. My research career began in … Continue reading →

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    6: How to start: some basic principles

    Posted on Thursday 9 April 2015 by Quaestio

    There are starting points that we can take from ‘systems thinking’  and theory development (‘evolvere theoria et intellectum’). Add ‘methods’ (including data – ‘Nullius in verba’) to this and this becomes the STM first step. S: define the system of … Continue reading →

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    5: Evolvere theoria et intellectum

    Posted on Thursday 9 April 2015 by Quaestio

    We need data; but we need to encapsulate our understanding of cities in theories; and then we need to represent these theories in models. From ‘Nullius in verba’ to ‘Evolvere theoria et intellectum’ as a subsidiary motto: develop theory and … Continue reading →

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