Related papers: From form to information: Analysing built environm…
Human settlements on Earth are scattered in a multitude of shapes, sizes and spatial arrangements. These patterns are often not random but a result of complex geographical, cultural, economic and historical processes that have profound…
Urban form plays a crucial role in shaping transportation patterns, accessibility, energy consumption, and more. Our study examines the relationship between urban form and transportation energy use by developing a parametric model that…
The thermodynamic definition of entropy can be extended to nonequilibrium systems based on its relation to information. To apply this definition in practice requires access to the physical system's microstates, which may be prohibitively…
Half of the world population resides in cities and urban segregation is becoming a global issue. One of the best known attempts to understand it is the Schelling model, which considers two types of agents that relocate whenever a transfer…
Many socioeconomic studies have been carried out to explain the phenomenon of gentrification. Although results of these works shed light on the process around this phenomenon, a perspective which focuses on the relationship between city…
Understanding online communities requires an appreciation of both structure and culture. But basic questions remain difficult to pose. How do these facets interact and drive each other? Using data on the membership and governance styles of…
The city is a complex system that evolves through its inherent social and economic interactions. Mediating the movements of people and resources, urban street networks offer a spatial footprint of these activities; consequently their…
Pervasive infrastructures, such as cell phone networks, enable to capture large amounts of human behavioral data but also provide information about the structure of cities and their dynamical properties. In this article, we focus on these…
Cellular phones are now offering an ubiquitous means for scientists to observe life: how people act, move and respond to external influences. They can be utilized as measurement devices of individual persons and for groups of people of the…
The relationship between urban form and function is a complex challenge that can be examined from multiple perspectives. In this study, we propose a method to characterize the urban function of U.S. metropolitan areas by analyzing trip…
Potentially influential spaces in the spatial networks of cities can be detected by means of the entropy participation ratios. Local (connectivity) and global (centrality) entropies are considered. While the connectivity entropy has a…
The shape of buildings plays a critical role in the energy efficiency, lifestyles, land use and infrastructure systems of cities. Thus, as most of the world's cities continue to grow and develop, understanding the interplay between the…
Challenges due to the rapid urbanization of the world -- especially in emerging countries -- range from an increasing dependence on energy, to air pollution, socio-spatial inequalities, environmental and sustainability issues. Modelling the…
The growth of cities has traditionally been studied from a population perspective, while urban expansion-its spatial growth-has often been approached qualitatively. However, characterizing and modeling this spatial expansion is crucial,…
The conceptual background for a detailed study of the urban form of the city of Bologna is discussed with a view to modern methodological insight as it is being presented by recent results of complexity theory and the theory of…
Understanding the relationship between urban form and structure and spatial variation of property flood risk has been a longstanding challenge in urban planning and city flood risk management. Yet limited data-driven insights exist…
The traditional approach to the quantitative study of segregation is to employ indices that are selected by ``desirable properties''. Here, we detail how information theory underpins entropy-based indices and demonstrate how desirable…
Urban systems are primarily relational. The uneven intensities and distribution of flows between systems of cities results in hierarchically organised complex networks of urban exchange. Distinct urban spatial structures reflect the…
Cultural infrastructures, such as libraries, museums, theaters, and galleries, support learning, civic life, health, and local economies, yet access is uneven across cities. We present a novel, scalable, and open-data framework to measure…
Urban space is highly heterogeneous, with population and human activities concentrating in localized centers. However, the global organization of such intra-urban centers remains poorly understood due to the lack of consistent, comparable…