City and Its Sciences

"The City and Its Sciences" is a bold effort that responds to the critical need for reevaluation of quantitative urban research. It provides a forum for the exchange of views on the complexity paradigm and the models and approaches needed to analyze complex urban systems. I highly recommend the book to regional scientists, urban planners, and urbanists in general." Papers in Regional Science, Vol. 78/2

• 1. Introduction.- 1.1 The Guiding Idea Behind the Seminar.- 1.2 The Sciences of the City: A Moment of Crisis?.- 1.3 Some Questions and Initial Replies Emerging from the Seminar.- 1.4 The Concept of Complexity.- 1.5 The Planning of the City.- 1.6 The Papers in this Volume.- References.- Session 1: The City as a Highly Complex Entity.- 2. Cities as Self-Organising Complex Systems.- 3. A Short Discussion of Alternative Approaches to Modelling Complex Self-Organising Systems.- 4. The Possibilities and Limits of Self-Organisation.- 5. On the Foundations of Social Dynamics: An Efficient Mathematical Statement of a General Framework Underlying a Complex Nonlinear Social Determinism, Incorporating a Supra-Observer and a Suprastructure.- 6. Urban Development as a Guided Self-Organisation Process.- 7. Strange Loops, Tangled Hierarchies and Urban Self-Regulation.- 8. The Fractal Geometry of Urban Organisation: Beyond the Crisis of ‘Spontaneous Order’.- 9. The Complexity Paradigm in Architecture.- Session 2: The Sciences of the City.- 10. Urban Research and Complexity.- 11. Beyond Complexity in Urban Development Studies.- 12. Model, Plan and Process for the Control of Urban Systems.- 13. Self-Referential Processes of Spatial Integration.- 14. Innovation, Agglomeration and Complexity in Urban Systems.- 15. The Sciences of the City: Analytical Tools and Complexity.- 16. Towards a Semiotic Theory of the City and the Territory as a Landscape.- 17. Assessing Uncertainty and Complexity in Urban Systems.- Session 3: The Planning of the City.- 18. The Nexus Between Analysis and Design: A Case Study of an Uneasy Relationship.- 19. Order and Change, Rule and Strategy.- 20. Selected Issues of Urban Planning.- 21. New Conditions and Requirements for Urban Government.- 22. Town Planning andFluctuations of Rules Covering Time and Space.- 23. China in Search of a New Planning Paradigm.- 24. The Paradoxical Nature of Territorial Change: Science Parks and the Case of Trieste.- 25. Strategic Planning in Italy and the New Local Authority Act: The Master Plan for the City of Venice.- 26. The Art of the Science of the City.- Session 4: The Methodologies of the Urban Sciences.- 27. Design and Use of Information Systems for a Sustainable Complex City.- 28. An Information System for Planning Mobility and Transport in the Metropolis: Proposed Methodology for Setting Up an Integrated Tool for Decision Support.- 29. Urban Information Systems and Sustainable Urban Development.- 30. Towards the Complex City: Approaches and Experiments in Spatial Economics.- 31. Mathematical Models for Simulating Urban Mobility Systems: State of the Art and Lines of Development.- 32. A New Perspective for Methodologies in Spatial and Urban Analysis.- 33. Towards an Environmentally Compatible Mobility in the Region of Stuttgart.- Author Index.- List of Contributors.