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21School Blog: From Complexity to Collapse

05 Feb 2010

What do cities and cells have in common? Quite a lot, it seems, when you listen to Geoffrey West’s compelling arguments that show how scaling laws and mechanisms can draw connections between systems at all levels. Geoffrey West, an associate fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, used his talk in the 21st Century School seminar series to highlight the tension between growth and sustainability in 21st century cities. With a wide variety of arguments and data-filled slides, charts and graphs, West showed how, like biological networks, cities and other social networks have evolved to efficiently distribute energy and resources to all corners. But while the infrastructure patterns of cities – roads, water lines and other resource distribution networks – tend to follow similar economies of scale to biological ones, the social systems of cities operate very differently.

The 21st Century School blog provides further details and examples drawn from West’s talk, as well as the opportunity to continue the discussion online.

On Thursday, 11 February at 3:30 pm, Professor Mike Batty from University College London provides another take on cities with his talk, “Anticipating Future Complexity: Are Systems Such as Cities Getting More Complex?"

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