As the world urbanizes, will the resource demands humanity places on earth increase or decrease, and why? As urbanization in the developing world catches up with that of the developed world, what lessons might be distilled from a better understanding of cities as complex systems?
SFI’s April 11 Science Board Symposium in Santa Fe prompted an examination of cities from many angles. Invited speakers represent- ed physics, economics, ecology, sociology, and anthropology.
The daylong discussion was part of a whirlwind weekend for SFI that included an April 10 Science Steering Committee meeting, an April 12 Science Board meeting, an April 13 Board of Trustees meeting, and an April 14 public lecture by Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Cities are hubs of innovation, politics, and commerce. They also are the genesis of disease, poverty, and pollution. The question of whether urban living, on balance, is more or less sustainable than rural living is still unresolved to some extent, says SFI External Professor Luis Bettencourt (Los Alamos National Laboratory), who helped organize the event.
Many factors influence a city’s sustainability: how dense or how sprawling it is, the use of heating and air conditioning, patterns of consumption, and the availability of public transportation, for example.
The important questions, says Luis, are how can people create efficiencies of scale that would reduce the negative effects of urbanization, and what solutions might improve the overall sustainability of cities? It’s not clear yet what actionable insights the study of urbanization might offer urban planning, he says.
“Cities have the characteristics of a complex system,” he says. “They are not purely social, ecological, economic, or physical, yet we have new indications that much about cities is universal and predictable. This is a natural direction for an institution like SFI, and there is a lot more yet to do.”
For more information, www.santafe. edu/events/workshops