The Chaotic, Fractal and Complex City

Many cities are aspiring to be a World Class, Creative (1), Global (3), High Technology or an Information City. While these terms can be considered theoretical constructs, they can also be seen as utopian ideals. The promise of the transformation of the declining Industrial City to a High Technology City or the achieving of any of the other classifications (i.e., World Class City) is beneficial to a relatively small group of any urban population (e.g. bourgeois). The unemployed, working urban poor and the under-employed are not inspired by the same vision. In fact, the persual of the realization of these types of cities could be leading to further urban despair. Academia has devoted numerous articles and books related to these topics mostly relating to an attempt to categorize and describe them. What is missing is a discussion on how this will benefit those that are not part of the new bourgeois. This plethora of terms and conceptual models to describe the emerging new urban forms are ...