Professor Michael Batty at Tedx London Cities 2.0 Series

On Friday December 6th CASA's Mike Batty presented aTEDxLondon talk in the City 2.0 series entitled “When all the world’s a city: defining future cities”. The event was part of a global initiative called ‘City 2.0′, focusing on new approaches to understanding the city in the postindustrial era. It was hosted by Dave Rowan, Editor of Wired UK and supported by the TSB City Catapult amongst others.

By 2050, 75% of us will be living in urban areas. Cities matter. They provide incredible opportunities for living, working and playing but as they grow bigger, they face problems: overcrowding, congestion, shifting demographics and air pollution to name but a few. The event asked: What can we do now and in the future to build and run better cities? Mike’s talk explored future population growth, the demographic transition to much a more stable world population, and the massive migration taking place to cities which implies that everyone will be living in cities by the end of the 21st century. He illustrated how the UK city system is all of one piece examining how it could be broken into bits using ideas from percolation theory in physics.

His powerpoint, the full programme and related material can be viewed the following links:

http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/files/2013/12/BATTY-TEDxLondonF.pdf

http://tedxlondon.com/city2-0/

http://www.complexcity.info/files/2011/06/batty-epa-2011.pdf