Portugali J. Complexity, Cognition and the City

Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011. - 421 с.
ISBN: 978-3-642-19450-4After his highly successful book Self-Organization and the City, Juval Portugali now presents his new book Complexity, Cognition and the City. I have had the opportunity of reading his manuscript and I must say, I am deeply impressed with both its depth and breadth. Surely, it will provide theoreticians as well as practitioners with remarkable insights. Why is this so? Let me start with practitioners, e.g., regional or city planners. As Portugali has early observed and studied, the phenomena of self-organization play a very important role in the development of cities, regions etc. In how far can planners deal with these processes? Can planners avoid them, steer them, utilize them? Clearly, insights gained at this level may have (or at least should have) considerable impact on the decision making of governmental agencies. (Actually, Portugali devotes a whole section to decision making including the fundamental results of Kahneman and Tversky).
Portugali’s book, however, goes far beyond questions concerning the development of settlements starting several thousands of years ago till our age. As the title of this new book indicates, Portugali applies complexity (theory) to problems of cognition where he touches upon questions such as pattern recognition but also categorization etc. He also incorporates concepts such as Dawkin’s memes, to mention just another example of the breadth of his book. Thus, this book offers many important stimuli and results to researchers and students in cognitive science and to a broad audience interested in Complexity. I am sure the readers will be as delighted as me when reading this work either systematically, or just browsing through chapters that are of particular interest to the respective reader.The Cultures of Cities
The Two Cultures of Cities
The Two Cultures
The Two Cultures of Cities
Parallel Currents
CTC – One Medium with Two Messages
The First Culture of Cities
Thu¨nen’s Isolated State
The “Isolated City”
The Best Location
Cities as Central Places
Rank-Size Cities
Ecological Cities
The Eco-City
Gravity Cities
Spatial Diffusion and the City
Cities as Simple Systems
The Second Culture of Cities
Introduction
SMH (Structuralist-Marxist and Humanistic) Cities
The City of Social Justice
The Marxist City
The Humanistic City: From Space to Place and Back Again
PPD Cities (Postmodern, Poststructuralist, and Deconstruction)
The PPD City
The Third Way
Hagerstrand’s City of Daily Routines
CTC as a Link Between the Two Cultures of Cities
Complexity Theories of Cities (CTC)
Introduction
Benard Cells
A Concise Introduction to Self-Organization and Complexity
Long-Term Complexity Theories of Cities
Dissipative Cities
Synergetic Cities
Sandpile Cities
Short-Term Complexity Theories of Cities
Chaotic Cities
Fractal Cities
Complexity Models of Cities
Cellular Automata and Agent-Based Cities
FACS (Free Agents on a Cellular Space) Cities
Small World Cities
Concluding Notes: CTC – First, Second, or Third Culture of Cities?
Complexity Theories of Cities Have Come of Age: Achievements, Criticism, and Potentials
Achievements
Criticism
What Went Wrong?
The Medium is the Message
Implicit Criticism
The Qualitative Message of Complexity Theory to Cities
Partial Application
Adaptive vs. Nonadaptive Application
The Limits of Nonadaptive CTC
Simple vs Complex Agents
Potentials
Concluding Notes
Complexity, Cognition and the City
Cognition, Complexity and the City
Cognition
Cognitive Science – A Concise Introduction
The Black Box
Classical Cognitivism
Embodied Cognition
Cognition and the City
Cognitive Maps
The Image of the City
Cognitive Cities
Systematic Distortions in Cognitive Maps
Kinds of Cognitive Maps of Cities
Cognition and Complexity
Synergetics and Cognition
Self-Organizing (Cognitive) Maps
Complexity, Cognition and the Dynamics of Cities
The Boundary of the City as an Arena
The Boundary of the City as a Derivation and Representation
The Boundary of Reductionism
A Concluding Note: SIRN (Synergetic Inter-Representation Networks)
SIRN – Synergetic Inter-Representation Networks
Introduction
IRN and SIRN: A Preliminary Introduction
From IRN to SIRN
SIRN’s List of Basic Propositions
SIRN’s Basic Propositions
Innate Capability for Representation
The Interaction Between Internal and External Representations
Shannonian and Semantic Information
Implicate and Explicate Relations
Similarity to Genotype–Phenotype Relations
The Boundaries of the Cognitive
Synergetics
SIRN – The Basic Model and its Three Submodels
The Basic SIRN Model
Intrapersonal Subjective Submodel
Interpersonal Collective Process
Interpersonal with a Common Reservoir
Concluding Notes
Shannonian Information and the City
Introduction
Faces
The Face
The Face of the City
Two Questions and Two Answers
Legitimizing Artifacts in the Process of Cognition
Artifacts
Shannon’s Information and Cognition
Shannon’s Information
The Magical Number 7
Figurative Goodness
How Many Bits to the Face of the City?
Houses
Streets
Local vs. Global Information
Concluding Notes
Semantic Information and the City
Introduction
Semantic information enters in disguise
Aspects of Semantic Information
Pattern Recognition – The Process that Gives Rise to Semantic Information
Grouping and Sequential Processing
Semantic Categorization and Shannonian Information – The Gaudi Effect
Central Place Grouping and Categorization
Semantic Information and Self-Organization
Implications
Information Theory
Cognition
Pragmatic Information
Urban Elements
SIRN: A New View on Categorization and Pattern Recognition
Information Adaptation
Concluding Remarks
Notes on the Category ‘City’
Introduction
Cities from the Point of View of Cognition
The City as a Classical Category
The City of Wittgenstein
The Embodied Cities of Experiential Realism
The City – A Peculiar Category
Cities Are Very Large Objects
Each Single City Is Itself a Category
Cities Are Artifacts
Cities Are Self-Organizing Systems
The Category ‘City’ has a 5,000 Year-Long Life Span
The Boundary of the Cognitive
Concluding Notes
Complex Artificial Environments
Introduction
Cities and Languages
Chomsky’s E- vs. I-Languages
Space Syntax
Alexander’s Pattern Language
Complex vs. Simple Artificial Systems
Cities and the Sciences of the Artificial
Methodology
The Ant Hypothesis
Information Compression
CTC as a Link Between Space and Place
CTC – The Deeper Messages
The Production of Space and Place
The Differences
Place and Space as Two Forms of Information Compression
The Two Cultures Once Again
Complexity, Cognition and Planning
The Two Cultures of Planning
Introduction
The Planning Pendulum
Utopian Planning – The First Hermeneutic Culture of Planning
The ‘Rational Comprehensive’ as the First Scientific Culture of Planning
SMH Planning as the Second Hermeneutic Culture of Planning
The Catch of the Kitsch
Planning and the New Urban Reality
The Collabative Planning Approach
Strategic Urban Planning (SUP)
On the Conjunction Between Collaborative Planning and SUP
Governance
New Urbanism
Complexity Theories of Cities: First, second, or third culture of planning?
CTC: The Quantitative Message
CTC – The Qualitative Message
Complexity, Cognition, and Planning
Introduction
Cognitive Planning
Memory and Planning
Complexity, Cognition, and Planning
Pattern Recognition
Decision Making
Collective Urban Planning and Design
A SIRN View on Planning, Design, and Construction
Collective Planning
Collective Design
Concluding Implications
From Solitary to Collective and Professional Planning
Collective Design?
Planning Behavior
Learning from Paradoxes about Prediction and Planning in Self-Organizing Cities
Introduction
Achilles and the Tortoise
Paradoxes
From Schro¨dinger’s Cat to Planning Paradoxes
Schroedinger’s Cat
The rbc City Paradox
An Imaginary Prediction Paradox
A Real Case of Planning Paradox
Learning from Paradoxes
Self-Fulfilling and Self-Falsifying Predictions (SFFP)
Classical vs. Self-Organizing Planning Theories
Prediction in Complex Self-Organizing Systems
Planning in Dual Self-Organizing Systems
Memory, Complexity, Prediction, and Planning
Prediction as Information
Concluding Notes
CTC, Social Theory Oriented Urban Theory, and Planning
Linking CTC Oriented and Social Theory Oriented Planning
The Self-Organization of Communicative Planning
The Ethical Dimension of CTC
The Butterfly Effect of Tel Aviv Balconies and its Implications
Forms of Planning
Public Participation in Planning
Toward a CTC-Derived Planning Theory
The Current Problematic of Planning Theory
The Structure of the Planning System – The Missing Components of Planning Theory
The Perception of the City as a Derivation/Representation and its Planning Implications
The City as a Market Failure and Externality
Planning as an Instrumental Arm of the National Government
The Planners and the Planned
Toward an Urban Derived Urban Planning
A Self-Planned City
Introduction
The Three Planning Authorities
The Legislative Planning Authority
The Planning Executive Systems
The Judiciary Planning Authority
The Planning Law
Sources of Inspiration
The Matrix of Urban Elements
Planning Hermeneutics
Concluding Notes
Complexity, Cognition and Urban Simulation Models
Revisiting Cognitive Dissonance and Memes-Derived Urban Simulation Models
Introduction
Principles of SIRN USM
A Comprehensive CTC
A Cognitive CTC
Simple vs. Complex Agents
Intentions vs. Behavior
Classical Social Theory
Complexity Theories
SIRN
Cognitive Dissonance-Derived USM
Cognitive Dissonance
Spatial Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance, Chaos, and Emerging Urban Boundaries
The Model
Results: Spatial Cognitive Dissonance and Socio-Spatial Emergence
Memes-Derived USM
The Genetic Code Metaphor
Memes and the Extended Phenotype
The Model
The Definition of the m-Code
Cultural Groups
Local and Global Information
Some Results
Model Dynamics for Low-Dimensional Cultural Identity: K = 1 and K = 2
Concluding Notes
CogCity (Cognitive City): A Top-down!Bottom-up USM
Introduction
Cognitive Processes and Their Implications
A SIRN Urban Simulation Model
Information Compression Implies a Top-down Decision Process
Agents’ c- and s-Cognitive Maps
Embodied Spatial Models
The Infrastructural Urban Categories
The Overall Model Dynamics
Cognitive City (CogCity) – The Model
The Agents
The Infrastructural Categories
Results
Concluding Notes
Pattern Recognition, SIRN and Decision Making
Introduction
Pattern Recognition as Decision Making
An Extension Concerning Cognitive Mapping
Decision-Making Heuristics
A SIRN Approach to Decision Making
Intrapersonal Decision Making
Interpersonal and Collective Decision Making
An Outline for a SIRN Decision-Making Model
Decision Making, Conflicts and Time in a Synergetic City
Introduction
Synergetics – A Reminder
The Assignment Problem
The Model
Simulation Results
Time-Dependent Costs, Neighborhoods, and Dynamic Clusters
Conclusions
Concluding Notes: Complexity Theories of Cities at the Gate of the 2010s

Index