Systems of cities and levels of organisation

Abstract

It is relatively easy to think of a city as the product of multiple interactions, between the agents involved (local authorities, companies, social groups, inhabitants), their material or symbolic artefacts (housing, infrastructure, institutions, representations), and events or episodes marked by political interventions, economic circumstances, technological innovations, etc. The recent history of writing about the city is punctuated by conceptual formalisations of the production of the urban space [41], models of urban dynamics à la Forrester [28], or models of self-organisation inspired by synergetics [51,77] and dissipative structures [1]. Game theory has inspired a city-building simulation game, SimCity, and its many sequels. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.