The Chaotic, Fractal and Complex City

l For those interested in using fractal analysis to understand urban form, Dr. Batty’s and Dr. Longley's seminal book, Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function  is still the most comprehensive work on this subject. It is now available for free in pdf format at: http://www.fractalcities.org/ . Dr. Batty's excellent follow-up book Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent-Based Models and Fractals   is available through MIT Press and other sources. Hopefully, one day this book will also be available on-line For other online papers concerning spatial analysis, many with an urban focus and several  on aspects of fractal analysis, and agent based modeling, go to website of the Barlett School Centre for Spatial Analysis (CASA) of at the University College of London which Dr. Batty is  associated  at: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/  My own work and many others who are now conducting research on urbanization using fracta...

The metaphor of fractals has endless applications.  Most view fractal analysis is related to the characteristics of object. However, viewing human beings as fractal gives a much expanded view of fractals. It implications are boundless. For those who may be reading my webpage for the first time, I will explain my version of fractals.  A fractal starts our as nothing and may end as nothing too.  But, before a fractal emerges, there exists an environment.  The environment represents the boundaries that the fractal can function at its inception.  The beginning of a fractal is the placement of an element into the environment. At this point, it is not a fractal; it is just a static element.  This element has its own characteristics, some inherent and others fabricated by its creator, referred to as rules. Therefore, before a fractal can be generated there has to be two prerequisites: an environment and a set of rules.  In mathematical fractal generation, ...

The city in post-industrial/information age city in the U.S. , Europe and other developed nations is organized on rigid representative democracy, defined political jurisdictions and controlled by a plutocracy made up of developers, corporations and the extremely wealthy.  As on the national scale, but sometime worse, politicians are guided by their own self-interest which is usually geared toward first establishing and maintaining their power in the community. The citizens of a city must come forth and petition for changes, much like in medieval times.  The city system of government, like the national one, has been placed under the control of the One Percent (AKA economic nobility.)  Most residents of cities have been alienated from their government and have become complacent.  The Occupy Movement in some locations have set in motion new ways of civil involvement and engagement.  The General Assembly form of decision-making has been proposed as a adjunct or repl...

I have been pondering some questions in the last couple of months about fractals in urban morphology: 1) Are there certain basic formulas that result in one or another type of fractal; 2) Are the fractal rules that form urban like fractals that are indicative of sustainable or unsustainable growth patterns in urbanizing areas.?;  3) Can urban development policy be translated to rules and subsequently be modeled in a real world scenario?; and 4) What are further delineations that can be made in fractal dimensions of urban areas?.  At this point, these are strictly musings and are naturally nebulous, as I have not delved further into them.  However, it seems that both of these topics are important, but are not being addressed by researchers in the field of fractal analysis of urbanization.  I would like to briefly touch on these points and at a later unknown date, go back to them in my blog and develop a paper around them. These issues may seem technical and dry on the...