Can We Build Cities That Think Like A Planet?
Developing measures of network resilience is one job of network theory. It’s a particularly pressing issue for understanding cities and their role in the Anthropocene. As the multiply overlapping networks of human and natural systems co-evolve into something new — as Alberti predicts — can scientists find ways to see which actions will lead to positive innovation?
Understanding the ways cities and the planet evolve together will be crucial because there is negative innovation, too. It’s possible that the outcome of a hybrid system will be evolution to a new state of collapse. That’s when the functions that defined the historical ecosystem (and made it healthy) simply fall apart, leading to massive die-offs. If, however, we can understand the tipping point of hybrid ecosystems more clearly, we might be able to supercharge their capacity for innovation. The goal would be to guide the co-evolution of human and natural systems as they generate novel functions together.
[Read full article at the NPR site]
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