This lecture addresses the growing desire to create geometrical models that design better, smarter, and more efficient cities. Cities are inherently very complex to model because they are simultaneously dense and large, spanning from a few to hundreds of square kilometers, and because their underlying structure is influenced by a very large number of hard-to quantify variables including land policies, economic behavior, transportation infrastructure, governmental plans, and population changes. In this talk, I will provide a brief overview of a new approach that blurs the boundary between behavioral modeling and geometrical modeling of urban spaces. Within computer graphics and visualization research focuses on producing complex and visually appealing 3D geometrical models from images and/or LIDAR, while urban behavioral modeling focuses on accurate urban dynamics and behaviorally-validated simulations using socio-economic data, for example. I will show how our concurrent behavioral and geometrical simulation significantly benefits the design, editing, and prediction of large-scale 3D city models. The result is the ability to generate, in a few minutes, 3D city models that resemble existing locations, to simulate urban behaviors not previously possible, to predict and visualize the outcome of urban policies and regulations, to design cities that best conform to meteorological aspects, and to consider the urban ecosystem during the design phase. I will present our latest collection of works representing the state of the art and will also inform the audience on the latest related thoughts and approaches in the field.

The acquisition and simulation of large urban environments is one of the great challenges of computer technology today. The goal is to obtain a digital model of large-scale urban structures in order to enable simulating physical phenomena and human activities in city-size environments. The model can be used to understand the behavior of the captured structures in several scenarios such as earthquakes, crashes, and explosions. Furthermore, the models should be able easily modifiable and extendable in order to speculate about response policies in unforeseen scenarios or to guide urban development plans supporting efficient population growth and emergency response. Rather than focus on minute environment details, the emphasis should be on modeling flexibility and on problem identification and resolution coordination in order to produce improved planification and response.

Geometry has always been the principal mathematical means of describing the form of a city, persisting from the plans of ancient cities through to many contemporary studies. In recent decades there has been an increasing interest in the application to urban analysis of mathematical techniques that are more commonly used in biological studies of the metabolism of individual animals and insects, in their social groupings and collective constructions, and in the relations of energy, information and material flows through ecological systems.

The hypothesis of our current research is that the combination of the study of energy, information and material flows and their networks in relation to the environmental physics of the urban surface and spatial patterns of the city, and how each acts upon the other over time, will be a significant step towards understanding of the dynamics of cities.

Michael Weinstock’s lecture:

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Michael Weinstock’s focus is on the complex systems of the physical world: the forms and processes of the climate, the land surface of the earth, the emergence and evolution of all living species and of genetics, followed by the dynamics of individual and collective metabolisms from which intelligence, social and spatial orders emerge.

Weinstock’s strategy to generate an urban form through series of genetic evolutions is based on climatologist mathematics and physics. Two settings (quantitive data) are enought to predict most of the energetic behaviour of the urban form. Considering the topology as an analitical tool, and aided with a “very simple RhinoScript” “…it is possible to generate the number of conections on topological networks from the most private room to the city as a whole.”

Dr. Keith Lilley joined the School of Geography at Queen’s in 1999 as lecturer in human geography. He began his academic career at the University of Birmingham, gaining a PhD in 1995. Dr. Lilley was awarded a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 1996 and took this up at Royal Holloway (University of London) in the Department of Geography. At Queen’s Dr. Lilley is currently Examinations Officer and has experience working on various teaching committees, at both university and school level. Dr. Lilley teaches modules on urban and historical geography, with a particular focus on urban landscapes in contemporary and historical contexts. This continues a long tradition of teaching historical geography at Queen’s.

Dr. Keith Lilley’s research interests are in historical geography and urban morphology. He is particularly interested in how urban landscapes were shaped during the middle ages in Europe, which brings him into close contact with medievalists in disciplines such as history and archaeology. While Dr. Lilley is one of the very few geographers working in the UK on the middle ages, medieval historical geography has been and continues to be a very distinctive aspect of research in the School of Geography at Queen’s, making contributions that reach across a range of disciplines concerned with the medieval past.

Dr. Keith Lilley’s lecture:

Dr. Lilley offered an innovative interpretation of how medieval Christians infused their urban surroundings with meaning. He demonstrates how the city carried Christian cosmological meaning and symbolism, sharing common spatial forms and functional ordering.

Dr. Lilley argues that the medieval mind considered the city truly a microcosm: much more than a collection of houses, a city also represented a scaled-down version of the very order and organization of the cosmos.