The PAIR Distinguished Lecture delivered by Prof. Michael BATTY, Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London, was successfully held on 1 September 2023. The lecture was moved completely online given special arrangements under Super Tyhoon Saola. The webinar attracted over 300 participants from more than 30 countries and regions. It was also broadcasted live on multiple social media platforms, including Bilibili and Weibo, and viewed by over 11,000 online audience in total.
In the lecture, Prof. Batty began by giving an overview of the development of science of cities in the last 50 years. Drawing on the system approach and complex theory, he shared how urban science involves top-down and bottom-up thinking, and is a systematic, complex and evolving discipline built on knowledge in social physics, economics, transportation and many scientific methods that yield theories. He illustrated this with city morphology examples from the UK and the Greater Bay Areas (GBA) generated by large-scale computer models. He concluded the lecture by speculating on some of the challenges with fractal geometry, size and scaling, networks, and building models in the field and suggesting the way forward for the discipline.
A question-and-answer session moderated by Prof. CHEN Qingyan, Director of PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research and Prof. John SHI Wenzhong, Director of Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute, followed. The audience was inspired to have a fruitful exchange with Prof. Batty.
Please click here for an online review.
Please click here for the powerpoint slide.
