{"id":1812,"date":"2011-01-22T17:08:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-22T22:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/?p=1812"},"modified":"2011-02-20T16:18:39","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T21:18:39","slug":"different-types-of-urban-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2011\/01\/22\/different-types-of-urban-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Different types of urban science"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"CC<\/a>

CC image from futureatlas.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Jeff Wood’s handy mailing list<\/a> on behalf of Re-connecting America<\/a> pointed me towards this article from Urban Omnibus<\/a>, disputing the broad conclusions from Geoffrey West’s work towards discovering a universal theory of cities<\/a>.\u00a0 Eric Peterson, the author, does not like the implications of West’s quantitative work and the implications of physical laws that might apply to cities:<\/p>\n

Despite proposing to have radically reinvented the field in which architects and urbanists work, the article appears to have garnered little attention among commentators and blogs from within architecture and urbanism. Perhaps the article\u2019s lack of substance explains professionals\u2019 reluctance to engage with the implications of West\u2019s work. Nonetheless, it is crucial for those of us interested in the serious study of urbanism to look closely at the article, if only because many of the assumptions it advances strike me as undermining an understanding of cities as complex and important things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The charge that West’s work is somehow lacking in substance struck me as harsh and misguided.\u00a0 The notion that there can be only one true understanding of how cities work misses the obvious difference between\u00a0 West’s work and the more conventional urban studies that Peterson seems to prefer.\u00a0 The difference appears to be a simple one, based on a misunderstanding of the kinds of universal rules West seeks to understand, as well as the fundamental difference between qualitative and quantitative observation.<\/p>\n

Remembering that West is a physicist, Peterson’s charge that a universal theory of urbanism misses out on all of the complexity of a city represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what such a universal theory really means.\u00a0 Just look at West’s field – physics – and you can easily see exceedingly complex movements that can all be understood by the basic laws of Newtonian mechanics<\/a>.\u00a0 A full understanding of motion, as we know it, is an exceedingly complex undertaking, yet Newton essentially boiled that complexity down to three basic laws of motion, which can easily be translated into simple maxims.\u00a0 Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest; bodies in motion tend to stay in motion; for each and every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; etc.<\/p>\n

These laws have limits to their validity, of course, but that does not discount the fact that complex systems can be understood via the basis of simple laws. This reduction isn’t something to be feared.<\/p>\n

Peterson also seems to gloss over the mutually beneficial relationship between both qualitative and quantitative analysis.\u00a0 He frames urbanism in a qualitative way and then implies that the quantification of urbanism not only has little to offer, but is indeed dangerous<\/em> to our understanding of urban places:<\/p>\n

Further, such an approach should be read as dangerous to all of us who see cities as phenomena formed at the collision of dynamic economic, historical, social, political and ecological forces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This fear seems so misguided that I don’t even know where to begin.<\/p>\n

Instead of recognizing cities as the products of these complex forces, the object of West\u2019s study is purposefully contextless and unspecified. Describing how he applies his scientific principles to a specific city he\u2019s studying, he says, \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.\u201d West goes on to qualify this assertion by saying that, essentially, the differences between cities that we so often discuss are merely superficial, material ones, related to how a city functions rather than to each city\u2019s unique history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even in areas of knowledge where we have a strong quantitative understanding of how things work, this knowledge has never derailed our searches for qualitative understanding as well – for context, for history, for social interactions.<\/p>\n

Some of this confusion between the respective role for quantification and qualification stems from language.\u00a0 Peterson notes early in his piece his disdain for West’s characterization of cities as “problems” to be solved.\u00a0 Here, the word problem would have completely a different meaning to a mathematician and a physicist as compared to a ethnographer or an architect.\u00a0 To the mathematician, a problem is not necessarily a social ill but a riddle to be solved, a question to be answered.<\/p>\n

In the end, both approaches are crucial to our understanding of the places we live in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Wood’s handy mailing list on behalf of Re-connecting America pointed me towards this article from Urban Omnibus, disputing the broad conclusions from Geoffrey West’s work towards discovering a universal theory of cities.\u00a0 Eric Peterson, the author, does not like the implications of West’s quantitative work and the implications of physical laws that might apply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[450,451,277,275,278],"class_list":["post-1812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-demographics","tag-density","tag-qualitative","tag-quantitative","tag-universal-theory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-te","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1864,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions\/1864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}