The Chaotic, Fractal and Complex City

(This image was found  as part of a wonderful collection of artwork on Curitiba, Curitiba Ilustrada . The site is worth visiting to see the other works by the artist, Cesar Lobo.   The webpage contains illustrations for a book, Curitiba Ilustrada   Unfortunately, I could not find a good link for those interested in purchasing it.) I recently saw an intriguing question about “road diet” on the Metropolitan Transportation Planning Linkedin discussion group. For those not accustomed to transportation planning lingo, a ‘road diet’ is the reduction of lanes on an arterial , the substitution of turn lanes at intersections and other transportation engineering improvements. Intersections are usually where congestion is often caused, so 'road diet' in some cases does not reduce the capacity of the corridor.  This is interesting for the transportation planners and traffic engineers, but probably of little interest to others outside these professions. But, it more.. ...

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(This image found in the online article, "Declining suburbs: Twin-Cities area project focuses on how to revitalize communities" in MinnPost . An article related to this blog topic.) In several previous blog entries in   The Chaotic, Fractal and Complex City, I focused on the coming decline of the big box stores (see “The coming collapse of 'Big Box' and department stores and their urban impact” and follow-up entries), and a criticism of the concepts of Dr. Richard Florida, who proposes that the urban young professional creative class will be the primary vehicle for the revitalization of cities (see "It's alive.. It's alive" or another resurrection of the central city. A review of "The Next Major Real Estate Cycle: Walkable Urbanism" in Atlantic Cities .)   Although seemingly disparate topics, they have one commonality that links them together, the reorienting of urban areas due to emerging structural forces (such as the gr...

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According to a recent article in The Atlantic Cities , “The Next Major Real Estate Cycle: Walkable Urbanism” based on the newly gentrifying neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.  is that the American population is moving back into the urban core. While I was intrigued with the title of the article, as I read further, it started to sound familiar being a mixture of warmed over ‘back to cities’ propaganda  and Dr. Richard Florida’s ‘mantras’ about the cultural economy of cities.   However, I did personally enjoy the dig against real estate brokers, which has the ‘ring of truth’, but has little sound basis in empirical evidence. Plus, when did Washington, D.C. become the model for trends for the rest of the nation? The article tries to ‘spin’ it to make the readers believe that ‘as goes Washington then so goes the rest of the nation,’ but somehow it an argument you would like to believe, but just can’t.   Overall, the article was insipid, because the manner that ...

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This is an article worthy of reading.  Agent-based modeling is developing into a powerful tool for urban/regional and environmental planner.  Unfortunately, the discussion on the integration of GIS and agent-based modeling is limited in professional circles. New paper: Agent-based modeling for community resource management: Acequia-based agriculture