E-Learning-Inclusivo (Mashup)

We have been grateful to the wide array of planners, architects, techies, entrepreneurs and students of the built environment who have joined us on this journey. And the ‘Smart City‘ has featured again and again, whether it be a futurologist’s insights into the bionic, nature-centric adaptable cities of the future, or an economist’s keen ideas on instilling happiness in the built environment.

There is an evolution taking place where politics, policy, technology, the environment, and the economy all intersect. This movement towards technical, empirically driven local policy making could be our saving grace.This could be the future of government.

Imagining the Future City: London 2062 (free download) is an edited collection based on the London 2062 project from UCL’s Grand Challenge of Sustainable Cities. The London 2062 project engaged academics, policy makers and practitioners, providing a forum for serious debate about the challenges and opportunities for London in the five decades following the Olympics.

The book is divided into four sections, considering London in terms of Things, Connections, Powerand Dreams. The book features contributions from leading academic thinkers at UCL and from those involved in shaping London on the ground, through policy and practice. The authors consider the future of London from multiple viewpoints, including transport, energy, smart infrastructure, water, population, housing and the economy.

The aim of this book, and the London 2062 programme, is to open discussion about the future of London. What is the future we want to see for London? Which priorities for a global city are in opposition? How can we meet carbon emission targets and deliver new infrastructure in the 21st Century?

LONDON CALLING - How will you influence the shape of your city get involved folks! Thank you @plevy

Cities and network analysis.

Viewing cities as networks allows us to use the toolbox of network analysis on them, employing concepts such as ‘cores’ and ‘peripheries’, ‘centrality’, and ‘modules’. Batty says that an understanding of how different types of network intersect will be the key that really unlocks our understanding of cities.

Cities, like many other types of network, also seem to be modular, hierarchical, and scale-free – in other words, they show similar patterns at different scales. It’s often said that London is a series of villages, with their own centres and peripheries. but the pattern also repeats when you zoom out and look at the relationships between cities. One can see this in the way that London’s influence really extends across Europe, and in the way that linked series of cities, or ‘megalopolises‘, are growing in places such as the eastern seaboard of the US, Japan’s ‘Taiheiyō Belt‘, or the Pearl River Delta in China.

And there you have it.

The blue prints for understanding empirically a city, a society, a nation.

Think about it.