THE EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS OF SENTIENCE IN CITIES

摘要

Cities are the largest and most complex artefacts constructed by humans. They are dynamic, spatial and material systems that display phenomena characteristic of complex systems - power scaling, self-similarity across a range of scales, and 'far-from-equilibrium' dynamics. All cities have an 'architecture' - an arrangement of material in space that changes over time as they are continuously repaired and rebuilt. They collapse and expand in uneven episodes of growth and decay, and their infrastructure and information systems are changed accordingly. From this perspective, cities are dynamic nodes on extended multiple networks through which energy, information and material flows.