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This lecture is an online discussion organised under our new Scaling in Complex Systems lecture series. Under this new series, we shall hear from researchers investigating mechanisms of scaling, such as self-organized criticality, preferential processes, multiplicative processes and sample space reducing processes.

For the foreseeable future, lectures will remain predominantly online. 

Speaker Overview

Professor Denise Pumain is a geographer at ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She specialises in urban and theoretical geography. Her main scientific contributions surround building upon evolutionary theory within urban systems and transferring concepts and models from self-organising complex systems towards social sciences. She has been a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2009 and of the British Academy since 2012. Founder of the research laboratory P.A.R.I.S. (1984), Former Chair of the Commission on Urban Development and Urban Life of the International Geographical Union (1992-2000), founder of Cybergeo, European Journal of Geography (1996), Principal Investigator of the ERC advanced grant GeoDiverCity (2011-2016). She has published three books and has received awards such as the CNRS Bronze medal, and the Vautrin Lud International prize in Geography. 

Abstract

Many publications have attempted at connecting well-established theories of scaling in biology with observations about sets of cities using a variety of urban attributes and data from different parts of the world. I will review the main theoretical proposals from complex systems and connect them with issues from social sciences in order to disentangle the real scientific advances and empirical evidences from too quick and simple exercises of interdisciplinary transposition.

Especially, scaling effects indeed refer to central place theory, Zipf’s law, urban spacing, urban fractal structures, random growth processes and urban co-evolution. I also will discuss the question of two distinct levels of urban processes, inside and between cities, for trying to clarify many multi-scale issues in urban science.

Meeting Details

There will be 45-min lecture from the speaker, followed by a 45-min Question & Answer session.

To attend the lecture, please click this  at 15:00 on Thursday 19th November 2020.

The event will be held via Zoom.