The Chaotic, Fractal and Complex City

The link above will take you directly to the new issue of Urbana for Autumn 2006. The articles are very diverse and of high quality, as is the tradition of the journal. If you have any comments, I would be very willing to post them ,if they are appropriate, on this blog. You can also send them to the urbana blog at: http://journalurbana.blogspot.com/. We will be coming out with a new issue in Spring. There is a possibility of a special issue perhaps later on this year related to the Global Cities confenence depending on the number of articles received. We welcome anyone who is a academician or researcher in the area of urbanism (which is a very broad area) to submit your articles.

I was doing some searching and landed on this site (click above link.) There are a whole group of articles on morality and New Urbanism. I am in the process of reading the articles and will post further comments, if appropriate. I would welcome any readers of my blog, which apparently is just a few persons, to read these set of articles and post your responses. If you would like to expand your argument into a full paper, please keep Urbana in mind as a possible place for publication.

I presented a paper at the Global Cities 2006 conferenece held in Liverpool on29-30 June 2006. The link for the conference is at: http://hopelive.hope.ac.uk/mahumanities/GolbalCities/index.htm . Go to the above title link to review a draft of the paper or download it at: http://geocities.com/mmcadams_fatih/culturecities.doc  My PowerPoint Presentation can be downloaded at: http://geocities.com/mmcadams_fatih/culturecities.ppt  Any comments are welcome.

I recently presented a paper concerning my thoughts on the Information Age-High Technology City (IAHTC) at the Crossing Borders-Building Bridges Transdisciplinary-American Studies Conference on 25-27 May 2006 held in Istanbul, Turkey Istanbul is at the crossroads of East and West so this is a most appropriate place to hold this conference. Utopian ideas are a means to build bridges to another future. The paper is an expansion of the previous blog. You can view the entire paper by clicking on the link for this blog. I would appreciate any comments. Hopefully, this paper will be published in the near future.

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 ...

The term “Creative City” was coined by Richard Florida in The Rise of the Creative Class (2). He states that some cities attract those that are creative due to certain amenities. He states that those that are creative cities are those that rank high in the “Three T’s”-- Technology, Talent and Tolerance. Florida outlines what cities should do to become Creative Cities. Florida thinks that the economic development strategies that many cities use such as tax incentives are inadequate and not suitable for what Florida calls the Creative Age (my italics). He advocates center city redevelopment, a wide range of cultural opportunities, linkages between universities and the private sector, and a tolerant environment. (For further articles about the Creative class and Creative Cities go to Florida's webpage--CreativeClass.org http://www.creativeclass.org/ .) However, all are not convinced by Florida’s findings and prescriptions. In an opposing viewpoint, Malanga (3) states that Florida’s th...

It would be naive to state that all people and all places are equally ‘plugged’ into the global network. The richer nations are more connected to this network than the poorer nations. Some cities in the world also possess greater communication access and speed than other cities. Technology is creating another layer of the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots among countries. It could be redirected to assist in improving the status of ecnomically struggling economies. Could developing nations accelerate their level of economic development by increasing their global connectivity? Instead of giving nations economic aid for expensive capital improvement projects should national and international agencies be giving them computers, setting up Internet providors, developing networks and helping them to increase their levels of computer literacy? Can greater connection to the global communication network allow developing regions to ‘by-pass’ the traditional obstacles in development? These arguments may be s...