Jason Silva’s wonderful demonstration of patterns and order across many evolving spatial systems is what our science of cities is all about: flows, interactions, dynamics, self-similiarity, hierarchy and of course fractals. Take a look. These patterns swirl around all our systems from ourselves to that which we create.
Many years ago, Waldo Tobler provided the inspiration for mapping and modelling flows as potentials, possibly following Ravenstein, developing the simple concept of an ‘interaction wind’. His insight continues and now with new software like Processing we can visualize everything from Tweets in Manhattan to the Real Wind. Click through. Here is a link to one of Waldo’s early papers. You can see Ravenstein’s migration currents from one of Waldo’s maps which we reproduced on A Science of Cities website, here.
*(if the map doesn’t load, you may need a easy browser like Chrome)
As a prelude to our Smart Cities conferences on April 20th, you can read a short editorial in Environment and Planning B (April 2012) that sketches the main issues. Click on the above picture and you will be taken to the pdf and the journal’s web site