Inventing Future Cities

by Michael Batty

Overview

How we can invent—but not predict—the future of cities.

We cannot predict future cities, but we can invent them. Cities are largely unpredictable because they are complex systems that are more like organisms than machines. Neither the laws of economics nor the laws of mechanics apply; cities are the product of countless individual and collective decisions that do not conform to any grand plan. They are the product of our inventions; they evolve. In Inventing Future Cities, Michael Batty explores what we need to understand about cities in order to invent their future.

Batty outlines certain themes—principles—that apply to all cities. He investigates not the invention of artifacts but inventive processes. Today form is becoming ever more divorced from function; information networks now shape the traditional functions of cities as places of exchange and innovation. By the end of this century, most of the world's population will live in cities, large or small, sometimes contiguous, and always connected; in an urbanized world, it will be increasingly difficult to define a city by its physical boundaries.

Batty discusses the coming great transition from a world with few cities to a world of all cities; argues that future cities will be defined as clusters in a hierarchy; describes the future “high-frequency,” real-time streaming city; considers urban sprawl and urban renewal; and maps the waves of technological change, which grow ever more intense and lead to continuous innovation—an unending process of creative destruction out of which future cities will emerge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262038959
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	12/11/2018
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Batty is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London and the author of Cities and Complexity and The New Science of Cities, both published by the MIT Press.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Image Credits xiii

1 Predictability, Complexity, and Inventing the Future 1

2 The Great Transition 19

3 Defining Cities 41

4 Form Follows Function-Or Does It? 69

5 The Pulse of the City 101

6 Outward, Inward, and Upward: Suburbs to Skyscrapers 131

7 The Sixth Kondratieff: The Age of the Smart City 165

8 The Inventive Century 193

Notes 221

Bibliography 253

Name Index 269

Subject Index 273

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With a clear voice and compelling vision, Batty provides a roadmap for urban invention and reinvention in the unpredictable twenty-first century, with an eye for the interplay between technology and urban form. A significant contribution to the field of urban planning and urbanism more broadly.

—Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics, Harvard University; author of Triumph of the City

This is an inspiring book filled with thought-provoking ideas, from the intriguing tension between predictability and unpredictability of future cities to complexity theory and smart cities. Its tremendous scope will greatly enrich our understanding and thinking about past, present, and future cities.

—Mei-Po Kwan, Professor of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign; coeditor of Space-Time Integration in Geography and GIScience: Research Frontiers in the U.S. and China

With Inventing Future Cities, Mike Batty provides a fresh look at the future of an urbanizing world. Weaving together history and spatial theory with scenario analysis, Batty examines what future patterns and distributions of cities may look like in an era of disruptive technologies and global connectivity. This volume is a must-read for anyone interested in our urban future.

—Karen C. Seto, Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

Against the rising optimism in the growth of urban science and the predictive power of big data in service to urban improvement, Michael Batty draws on his decades of research to caution that, in his view, there may be limits to our knowledge of cities as complex systems. Those who seek to make progress in understanding how cities work—as scientists, scholars, or policy makers—will benefit from considering the challenges raised by this book.

—Luís M. A. Bettencourt, Pritzker Director of the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, University of Chicago

Michael Batty reconstitutes urban space into an unrecognizable zone full of new discoveries. This book is an invitation to travel novel vectors.

—Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University; author of The Global City

Editorial Reviews

Mike Batty's new book is a tour de force meta-narrative of both the trends and components of urbanism at the start of the 21st century and one that should be read by all those with an interest in cities. Situating the debate within a past, present, and future context, he offers some perceptive and provocative contributions on where cities might be heading. This is not some academic pseudo-navel gazing exercise, but rather a considered debate that revolves around planning, design, technology, the impact of new infrastructure and new patterns of living and working, and above all the digital dynamics that are affecting every aspect of our present and future.—Urban Analytics and City Science—

From the Publisher