The phenomenon of the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ refers to the finding that the aggregate of a set of proposed solutions from a group of individuals performs better than the majority of individual solutions. We investigated this effect in the context of planar Euclidean traveling salesperson problem (TSP). The goal in TSPs is to estimate the shortest tour through a number of cities, represented as ...

This paper discusses the cities that have the resources which enable firms and markets to be global. It considers the new intensity and complexity of globally-connected systems of production, finance and management which may disperse production, yet need (relatively few) cities to provide their organizational and management architecture. This produces new geographies and hierarchies of centrali...

Smart cities link the city services, citizens, resource and infrastructures together and form the heart of the modern society. As a “smart” ecosystem, smart cities focus on sustainable growth, efficiency, productivity and environmentally friendly development. By comparing with the European Union, North America and other countries, smart cities in China are still in the preliminary stage. This s...

This paper considers the role of soft skills in cities and industry clusters. It begins by specifying a model of agglomeration economies where soft skills allow agents to interact more productively. The model exposes two conflicting forces: agglomeration allows opportunities to interact, but it also produces thick, specialized markets, and this specialization can be a substitute for interaction...

Comparative studies of terrestrial vertebrates are one approach that can be used by researchers to build on the extensive work done by animal ecologists and applied ecologists in cities (Luniak, 1990; VanDruff et al., 1994; Nilon and Pais, 1997). Much of this work pre-dates the renewed interest in cities by mainstream ecologists. The new emphasis on the ecology of cities provides new tools and ...

Maya and Aztec cities exhibited a distinctive kind of low-density urbanism common in ancient Mesoamerica. The non-monumental components of these cities differed from the high-density ancient and historical cities in the Old World that are often considered the norm for pre-modern urbanism. Distinctive features include the practice of intensive agricultural cultivation within urban settlements, r...

This paper takes for granted the structural urbanisation trend in our world. It argues that there is a global competition among world cities in different parts of our planet. It aims to map out the relative disparities among a preselected set of major global cities by offering a benchmark analysis of these cities on the basis of a recently completed comparative study on their socioeconomic ‘pow...

Cities are home to more than half of the world population. Cities have been the centers of economic and social developments, as well as sources of many major environmental problems. Cities are created and maintained by the most intense form of human-nature interactions. Cities are spatially extended, complex adaptive systems—which we call landscapes. The future of humanity will increasingly rel...

Cities are perhaps the larger and most complex artefacts created by human activity. The characterisation of an object or system as an artefact assumes the existence of some form of intentionality behind its creation. Complexity science has been used to understand the formation of cities as products of self-organization and evolution, but it has paid little attention to the role of intentionalit...

Can you imagine a city that feels, understands, and cares about your wellbeing? Future cities will reshape human behavior in countless ways. New strategies and models of urban spaces are required for creating future cities to properly respond to human activity, environmental conditions, and market dynamics. Persuasive urban systems will play an important role in making cities more livable and r...