Information – The CASA Blog Network

Inventing Future Cities

Posted on Wednesday 12 December 2018 by Michael Batty

My new book is published on 11th December 2018 in the US and on the 8th January 2019 in the UK We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems … Continue reading →

Allometry, Big Data, complexity, Connectivity, flows, Hierarchy, Information, power laws, Scaling

The Good City Conference

Posted on Sunday 22 April 2018 by Michael Batty

The Urban Transformations Consortium’s Conference on the theme of the ‘Good City’ was held in Oxford last week from April 18thto 20th. A variety of approaches to cities were presented with panel sessions devoted to healthy cities, shelter and ownership, … Continue reading →

city size, complexity, emergence, Information, Smart Cities

Data-Driven Urban Dynamics at ORNL

Posted on Saturday 31 March 2018 by Michael Batty

Visited the Urban Dynamics Institute (UDI) headed up Budhendra Bhaduri (Budhu) which is a rapidly growing effort in data-driven technologies applicable to cities. This group which is based at Oakridge National Labs which began life in the war years as part of … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, flows, Information, networks, Smart Cities, Urban Dynamics

How Do We Handle Urban Complexity?

Posted on Friday 9 February 2018 by Michael Batty

I should not say this but I don’t remember much about writing the attached piece which is entitled ‘Technology and the Democratic Management of Urban Complexity’ but here it is: click here. Published by Acciona and from a book entitled … Continue reading →

complexity, ICT, Information, networks, Smart Cities

AI, Smart Cities and Urban Planning

Posted on Monday 15 January 2018 by Michael Batty

read my editorial in EPB: Urban Analytics and City Science, and also check out the fact that it is almost 50 years from when Alan Wilson started Environment and Planning (A) and 45 from when Lionel March started B. The … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, ICT, Information, networks, Smart Cities

In The Post-Urban World

Posted on Tuesday 5 December 2017 by Michael Batty

This new book edited by Tigran Haas and Hans Westlund from KTH is a collection of interesting and somewhat oblique essays on the urban world we have entered. Lot of people you know writing here. Ed Glaeser, Richard Florida, Patrick … Continue reading →

city size, complexity, Economies of scale, flows, Information, Interactions, urban and regional planning, Urban Dynamics

More Big Data and Cities

Posted on Friday 1 December 2017 by Michael Batty

Two new volumes in big data, cities and regions, with a strong spatial focus. The first Seeing Cities Through Big Data: Research, Methods and Applications in Urban Informatics’ is edited by Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah, Nebiyou Tilahun, and Moira Zellner and published … Continue reading →

Agent Based Models, Big Data, Connectivity, flows, graphs, Information, Interactions

Editor’s Choice: Geddes’ Centenary Paper

Posted on Tuesday 3 October 2017 by Michael Batty

The Editor of Landscape and Urban Planning has chosen our paper by Stephen Marshall and myself on Patrick Geddes as Editor’s choice. Our prize is that you can download it free from here and I do not have to post it … Continue reading →

complexity, Economies of scale, flows, Information, urban and regional planning

New Tools for Planning the Smart City

Posted on Tuesday 26 September 2017 by Michael Batty

I gave two lectures on our smart cities projects to Geography at Nanjing Normal University and to a selection of researchers at Shenyang Jianzhu University drawn from architecture, urban planning, transport and GIS on the 25th and 27th September 2017. I … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, flows, ICT, Information, Interactions, LUTI models, Transport Models

Data and the City

Posted on Thursday 24 August 2017 by Michael Batty

A new book on data and big data in the city edited by Rob Kitchin, Tracey P. Lauriault, Gavin McArdle from Routledge. Lot of very interesting material here on the data revolution in cities. Smart cities concepts are explained and critiqued … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Connectivity, ICT, Information, Interactions, Smart Cities

Smart Cities in Geography Review

Posted on Monday 21 August 2017 by Michael Batty

Geography Review is a brand new magazine for sixth formers (grade 12-13 in the US) studying any subject but particularly those who are interested in geography. In the UK geography is one of the top subjects in high school and … Continue reading →

Agent Based Models, Big Data, flows, ICT, Information, Smart Cities

Data and the City

Posted on Sunday 25 June 2017 by Michael Batty

Questioning what bigness means in terms of Big Data and the City is a key quest in understanding what the massive increase in data volumes means to understanding the urban challenges that lie ahead and our future planning of the … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Connectivity, flows, Information, Smart Cities

The Age of the Smart City

Posted on Tuesday 6 June 2017 by Michael Batty

In this paper (downloadable here), I argue that the smart cities movement is simply the latest stage in the massive dissemination of digital computation that began with its invention some 70 or more years ago. In fact, the key thesis … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Connectivity, Information, networks, Smart Cities

China Urban Development at UCL

Posted on Sunday 7 May 2017 by Michael Batty

Fulong Wu and his colleagues from the Bartlett School of Planning together with Peking University with several sponsors (see web site) ran a great meeting Friday and Saturday 5-6 May in UCL which gathered together some 200 researchers and academics … Continue reading →

Big Data, city size, complexity, Information, Smart Cities

Then and Now

Posted on Saturday 29 April 2017 by Michael Batty

In November 1986 I visited SunYatSen University and gave a public lecture about Urban Modelling. China was a very different world then, no cars, no computers, no email, barely functioning electricity. And of course it was before laptops, networks, hand-held … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Connectivity, flows, Information, LUTI models, Smart Cities, Transport Models, Urban Models, visualisation

Understanding Spatial Media

Posted on Saturday 25 February 2017 by Michael Batty

A new book from the Kitchin stable. I have a short chapter in it on smart cities and you can get it here. Over the past decade, a new set of interactive, open, participatory and networked spatial media have become … Continue reading →

Big Data, Information, Interactions, networks, Smart Cities

The Prevalence, Scaling and Variance of Urban Phenomena

Posted on Wednesday 11 January 2017 by Michael Batty

This coming month (January 2017) sees the launch of another of Nature’s flagship journals Nature Human Behaviour. In it, Andres Gomez-Lievano, Oscar Patterson-Lomba, and Ricardo Hausmann explore an integrated model which explains the prevalence, scaling and variance of urban phenomena … Continue reading →

city size, complexity, Economies of scale, Information, power laws

Review: London, The Information Capital

Posted on Tuesday 8 November 2016 by Oliver O’Brien

Mapping London’s co-founder and “Editor at Large” Dr James Cheshire co-produced “London: The Information Capital” with Oliver Uberti in 2014. We mentioned the book on its initial release. The book has this month has now been published in a softback edition by Penguin, with some minor corrections applied. If you missed out on the book […]

crime, crimes, data, Emotion, feelings, ghost, ghosts, grid, Information, information capital, Pac-man, Pacman

Big Data and the City

Posted on Saturday 1 October 2016 by Michael Batty

Look at the current issue of Built Environment. Papers from CASA and CASA alumni here as well as several others. “Big data is everywhere, largely generated by automated systems operating in real time that potentially tell us how cities are … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, flows, Information, Interactions, Smart Cities

Theoretical Filters

Posted on Friday 19 August 2016 by Michael Batty

Science celebrates the goal of parsimony. Occam’s razor and all that. Indeed I wrote an editorial about this a few years ago in 2010 (click here). The idea rests on assumptions that our best theories are those that strip away … Continue reading →

complexity, Hierarchy, Information

Cities, Environment and Sustainability

Posted on Monday 11 April 2016 by Michael Batty

Hegel once said that ‘everything is connected to everything else’ and in our world of cities, this seems ever resonant with the problems that we face. Danny Hillis and Neri Oxman have called this the Age of Entanglement and in this … Continue reading →

city size, Economies of scale, Information, Smart Cities, Urban Dynamics

Big Data and Urban Informatics

Posted on Friday 5 February 2016 by Michael Batty

Vonu Thakuriah, Nebiyou Tilahun and Moira Zellner organized a very successful conference in August 2014 in Chicago. CASA had two papers at the meeting and you can drill down and find them in the Proceedings which you get access to here. … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, flows, Information, networks, Smart Cities

China Rising? Empty Cities, Ghost Towns

Posted on Tuesday 12 January 2016 by Michael Batty

My current editorial in Environment and Planning B tracks the massive investments in infrastructure in China which have taken place since the Great Recession of 2007-2008. One of the key features of contemporary economic systems is their volatility with respect … Continue reading →

city size, Information, Smart Cities, urban and regional planning, Urban Dynamics

Smart Cities — Antoine Picon

Posted on Thursday 29 October 2015 by Michael Batty

Neat, crisp informative book by Antoine Picon in the AD Primer Series. Gives myself, James Cheshire and Joan Serras a mention too on transit in London and the science of cities but the book is valuable as a quick but meaty … Continue reading →

flows, Information, Smart Cities

Redefining Big Data, Recasting Small

Posted on Wednesday 28 October 2015 by Michael Batty

Giving two lectures by video at the E-Life Congress in Athens on November 6th and at the ITF-OECD Roundtable on 21st Century Public Interest Data Sharing on November 9 in Paris. The lectures are more or less the same and mirror that … Continue reading →

Big Data, Connectivity, flows, Information, Interactions, Smart Cities

Revealing Centrality

Posted on Thursday 22 October 2015 by Michael Batty

Chen Zhong (CASA) and her colleagues from ETH and MIT continue to produce interesting analyses from work with the EZ-Link data in Singapore. She introduces some interesting entropy measures along with other indices in revealing centrality in activity patterns. Her paper can … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, entropy, flows, Information

The First Publicly Displayed Computer Graphic?

Posted on Wednesday 7 October 2015 by Michael Batty

In digging up material for my smart cities lectures, I have always given a short history of computer graphics by way of background to visualization of cities. In fact the first computer graphic appears to be Jay Forrester’s demonstration of … Continue reading →

Information, Smart Cities, Urban Models

A Quick Course in Smart Cities

Posted on Monday 5 October 2015 by Michael Batty

Five lecture sessions starting tonight at 6-00pm at Arizona State University to a graduate class of geographers and planners on Smart Cities. Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week and Wednesday and Friday the following week. Two lectures per session for … Continue reading →

complexity, Connectivity, flows, Information, Interactions, Smart Cities

Calibrating Cellular Automata (CA)

Posted on Wednesday 29 July 2015 by Michael Batty

Urban CA models use sets of rules that are applied to each cell in the geographical array to change the state of the cell usually according to attributes that exist in the neighbourhood of the cell in question. As there … Continue reading →

Agent Based Models, Cellular Automata, Information, Urban Dynamics

Urban Transfer Entropy across Scales

Posted on Saturday 25 July 2015 by Michael Batty

Roberto Murcio led our work on applying ideas of information theory across scales so that mutual information can be transmitted one way, rather than symmetrically. The paper has just appeared in PLOS One. And you can Download the PDF from … Continue reading →

city size, complexity, entropy, flows, Hierarchy, Information

The Townsend Report

Posted on Wednesday 15 July 2015 by Michael Batty

An interesting report by Anthony Townsend of Smart Cities fame about the rapid emergence of urban science and the flurry of centres that have grown up in the wake of these new ideas as well as the development of smart … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Information, Interactions, Smart Cities, Urban Models

Urban Physics

Posted on Thursday 9 July 2015 by Michael Batty

Papers on the notion that physics can help us articulate our understanding of cities are not new but there are several recent commentaries worth looking at. There is a short sharp one pager that articulates the new science of cities as being … Continue reading →

Allometry, Big Data, city size, Connectivity, emergence, Information, Scaling, Smart Cities

Big Data in the Big Apple

Posted on Wednesday 10 June 2015 by Michael Batty

What we can learn here from New York: an interesting report from Eddie Copeland at the Policy Exchange. Fascinating reading from the place where open data was invented, and where Urban Mechanics was begun. I quote from the blurb: Today marks the … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Information, Planning Support, urban and regional planning

The Sixth Kondratieff Is The Smart City

Posted on Sunday 31 May 2015 by Michael Batty

Nikolai Kondratieff, a Soviet-era economist in the 1920s, developed a theory of the economy where technological innovations drove the business cycle. This looked a little too like the way the capitalist world explained itself and for these sins, Stalin sent … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, Information, Smart Cities, Urban Dynamics

Smart Cities by Anthony Townsend: A Review

Posted on Thursday 21 May 2015 by Michael Batty

Asked by Built Environment to review this some 18 months after it was first published, the world of smart cities has moved on so fast at the level of how we use personal devices to navigate, shop, search etc. that Anthony … Continue reading →

Big Data, complexity, flows, Information, Smart Cities, Urban Models

Virtuální Geografická Prostředí

Posted on Monday 24 November 2014 by Michael Batty

Well I don’t know what it means either. But if you read Czech you should be off to a flying start, and the Czech guy who translated it assures me that all of Eastern Europe read Czech so there you … Continue reading →

Geodesign, Information, Smart Cities