Output details

Cities: systems of systems of systems

Cities are examples of multilevel systems that are designed, planned and managed in the context of policy. There is no final design and the design process, as such, has no end point. The systems within cities include housing, transport, garbage, water, education, and health. This paper illustrates the interactions among these subsystems within systems which Johnson’s research over the years has identified as critical. For example, the transport subsystem enables people to leave the housing subsystem to visit relatives in the health subsystem. The subsystems themselves have subsystems, e.g. transport subsystems have metro, car, truck, pedestrian, bicycle, airport and other subsystems. These subsystems also interact, e.g. multimodal trips and modal competition. The dynamics of the whole emerges from the many interactions between the many parts. It remains an open question as to how to predict or forecast their behaviour in order to design, plan and manage them. Cities have been identified by the European Commission as exemplars in its Global Systems Science research initiative, to which Johnson has contributed both policy framing and direct research contributions. Through the GSDP (www. global-systems-science.eu, www.discover-gss.org) and NESS (www.nessnet.eu) projects Johnson has helped shape the outcomes of this Global Systems Science initiative. Johnson proposes that, given intense global demographic dynamics and climate change, new scientific theories are needed for planning cities which address multilevel interactions. It explores the extent to which Hypernetwork theory, developed by him over 30 years, can fulfil this role in city design, illustrated by planning for the expansion of the new Dutch city of Almere.