Technologies we use to understand the city are

changing the very things we seek to understand

Michael BattyCentre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

CASA-UCL

m.batty@ucl.ac.uk @jmichaelbatty

The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

I want to thank the organisers for taking the risk of inviting me – I am very pleased to do this, as

much because Doreen and myself go back to a time in the late 1960s when we were doing similar things

Let me tell you a little about this as it lies very much in the origins

of the digital

The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

We worked on land use models, transport, spatial interaction and these were only possible because

of computers

What few of us realised, although it was pointed out to us many

times, was how ‘universal’ digital computation was and would

become

The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

The philosophers said it: Turing said it, Vannevar Bush said it; of

course the captains of the computer industry said it was garbage – but computers were

destined to be everywhere

They are now. And at every step on this long and winding road,

they have revealed unexpected applications. We should not expect

otherwise.The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

Of course in the long view, what we are seeing is the transition

from a world based on energy to one based on information. In fact our current cities, in my view, are just a way-station on the path to a very different future, one which we

stand astride.

This is very much a phase transition in the best sense of

physics.The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

This is background so let me make three points that pertain to the matter of this session – sentient

cities.

• First, I don’t think cities are becoming sentient – we may be becoming more sentient as we use ICT

but not cities per se. I am not a believe in strong AI.

• Second, the idea that cities will become more sentient as we connect up is rubbish. One of the great myths of the smart cities movement is that

there are countless ways of integrating diverse data and networks. I will show you an example that there

probably can never be seamless linkagesThe 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

• Third, the city is certainly being changed by ICT and this is changing our focus, how cities functions, and of course our models and the way we might use

them.

It is changing our focus on how we study urban dynamics from the long to the short term and it is

enhancing our interest in dynamics in general. There are many links here with what I mainly do

which is work on the social physics of cities

So let me begin by telling you the problems an pitfalls of integrating all this stuff and in doing so refer to the idea of the sentient city from social

media and much else

The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

Smart Card DataOyster Card Taps

Tap at start and end of train journeysTap at start only on buses

Accepted at 695 Underground and rail stations, and on thousands of buses

991 million Oyster Card taps over Summer 2012 – this is big data

The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

Some videos from the big dataOyster Gives up its Pearls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sAugcb2Qj4

Pulse of the City https://vimeo.com/41760845

Nightlife

WorkTourism?

Events

Particular Events: Weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays

Tube, Overground and National Rail Networks in Londonwhere Oyster cards can be used

New York London Paris Moscow

My third point is about dynamics and how new digital data is

making us conscious of key issues on a diurnal and less cycles.

There is so much changing in the city due to computer and new communications that we need an urgent attack on the ways modern cities work and function. As I said on the Facebook page, form is now pretty disconnected from function, and cities are covered in multiple networks, many of them

invisible.So there are enormous problems of measurement due to invisibility and there are enormous issues pertaining to privacy. I could go on … but back to

the forum …The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015

m.batty@ucl.ac.uk @jmichaelbatty

Thank You

Michael BattyCentre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

CASA-UCL

www.complexcity.info

The 7th Doreen Massey Annual Event: Digital Geographies, March 2015