Urban Complexity, Scale Hierarchy, Energy
Efficiency And Economic Value Creation
Author(s)
S. Salat & L. Bourdic
Abstract
Several authors, such as Batty or Frankhauser have already analysed cities as
fractal structures. Putting in perspective historical cities with modernist cities,
others such as Alexander or Salingaros have stressed the loss of urban
complexity over time. This paper aims at going a step further and investigates
energy and economic aspects of cities through the prism of complexity theory.
Fostering a more systematic use of fractal approaches, the authors highlight the
crucial role that urban complexity plays in urban sustainability: only scale
hierarchic urban structures will succeed in optimising the use of scarce resources
allocated, improving at the same time energy efficiency and economic value
creation.
Keywords: power laws, fractals, urban efficiency, sustainable cities.
1 Introduction
Contrary to Vienna, Barcelona or Kyoto, Paris and Tokyo have grown without a
proper master plan. The plans of Paris and Tokyo though are never incoherent:
on every scale, patterns prove to be strikingly stable, as for example the size and
structure of the urban grid. In both cases, the layout is immediately picked up by
a remarkably dense geometry. In addition, in both cases, the city has adapted
differently to its culture and its time. Faced with these cities without plan but
which metric and topologic structures are extremely stable, two questions might
be explored. The first one boils down to asking whether inventing the city,
instead of investing in isolated projects, is not about defining rules of assemblage
and coexistence of elements. Modernism has impoverished this complexity and
often reduced the city to isolated objects. The second question that is the key
issue of this paper is about understanding urban complexity and defining the
Keywords
power laws, fractals, urban efficiency, sustainable cities.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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