AESOP PLANNING AND COMPLEXITY 21ST THEMATIC GROUP CONFERENCE – COMPLEX [COGNITIVE] CITIES: SENSING, PLANNING AND DESIGN IN URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS

Planning and complexity engages with the plurality of the urban as a complex relational web of systems, processes and flows. The research field is an emergent combination of multiple and transdisciplinary perspectives attempting to analyse, understand, influence and design future trajectories of urban transformation using a complexity framework incorporating the temporal dimension. Complexity Theories of Cities (CTC) have incorporated a multitude of conceptual perspectives over time, including uncertainty, wicked problems, system dynamics, self-organisation, non-linearity, graph-based systems, emergence, path-dependency, transitions, coevolution, interdependencies, open systems, cognitive behaviour, adaptivity, soft and hard systems. Today, societal transformations linked to technological change such as datafication, AI, automation and virtualisation, encapsulate new dimensions of potential risk and solution-oriented action, while suggesting the need for an updated CTC framework. In parallel, faced with catastrophic climate change and related undesirable sustainability outcomes, the ‘urban’ is seen as the site of influence, exacerbated impact and potential solution. Can engagement with complexity provide frameworks and approaches that have eluded us so far?