Can the complexity of cities really be reduced to a single set of equations, as the physicist Geoffrey West claims, or even 3,000 of them? Is it really true, as West’s numbers would indicate, that Corvallis, Oregon--a city of 55,000 two hours’ drive south of Portland--is the most innovative city in America? Perhaps there’s something in the water, or it may have more to do with the fact that West's model loves patents and Hewlett Packard’s Advanced Products Division is based there, along with its patent portfolio, one developed by thousands of researchers worldwide.
West’s conclusions are only as good as the data and the models (patents equal innovation) he has to work with. This problem--if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it--combined with the impulse to improve cities by models, is driving both IBM’s “smarter city” strategy and the nascent “urban systems” movement, which seek to apply complexity science to cities. IBM sponsored the first Urban Systems Symposium in May (where West co-starred in a show-stopping discussion with Paul Romer and Stewart Brand) and today announced the latest plank in its smarter city platform: an “app” containing 3,000 equations which collectively seek to model cities’ emergent behavior. IBM also revealed its first customer, the City of Portland, Oregon.
To read the full, original article click on this link: IBM Partners With Portland To Play SimCity For Real | Fast Company
Author: Greg Lindsay
