Geoffrey West is speaking at TED in this youtube and at the 4:05 minute mark in the clip, he says,
"Is that another version of this?"
and behind him on the big screen is a pic of a City, which is 'that', and then follows a pic of a Forest, the 'this'. Just a bit earlier he compares Cities to Whales, and Elephants, large mammals and such, and adds the qualifier...
"Is this metaphorical bullshit?"
Here's link to the clip:
https://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations#t-242106
quote
“What we found are the constants that describe every city,” he says. “I can take these laws and make precise predictions about the number of violent crimes and the surface area of roads in a city in Japan with 200,000 people. I don’t know anything about this city or even where it is or its history, but I can tell you all about it. And the reason I can do that is because every city is really the same.
A Physicist Solves the City
By JONAH LEHRER
unquote
My stewardess friend told me much the same, "they are all the same"...this in 1969...see Odds and Ends post...and the notion that Cities too are organic in the way Forests and Coral Reefs and Intertidal Zones and such are organic is probably widespread, and very old...some things, like gravity, and breeding, and the movement of the sun and moon and stars and planets, are experienced by everyone, and have been by everyone since day one, but sooner or later someone comes along that articulates things, like a Newton, a Darwin, an Einstein, and such, in such a way that we make use of things in new ways. Which is what West looks to be about...
I'd forgotten about D'Arcy Thompson, and his famous book, On Growth and Form...looking about for his work on youtube, I found a clip showing morphing shapes of clam shells...Thompson illustrated that there is mathematical proportions in our body shapes, and with the computers, it has been shown that body shapes can be changed by altering these proportions...it's a charming thing to see, like looking into a fun house mirror...hatchet fish and angel fish look very different, but their proportions are in the same sort of harmony, a kind of distorted reflection of an ideal fish shape...I sometimes wonder if at the very smallest level, things are being 'done with mirrors'...but that's an aside!...
I was watching the clam shell clip, and wondering if computers could model Forests and Coral Reefs and Intertidal Zones and such, and Cities, in the same way...and with that thought, looking about, I happened on West...
Thompson never really articulated any summation of what he illustrated, it's like he said, 'this is what I found, but I don't know what to make of it'...
quote
The book led the way for the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns are formed in plants and animals. Thompson recognised, however, that the book was descriptive, and did not present experimental hypotheses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Arcy_Wentworth_Thompson
unquote
Here's link to the clam shell clip:
quote
Morphogenesis and metamorphosis of a bivalve shell: a tribute to D'Arcy Thompson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNVsVbDdmkE
unquote
West makes some summations, and notes that Cities are very durable, but tend to degrade into nearly un-liveable conditions...what rescues them somewhat is innovations...new technologies come along that have kept pace with more and more people living in Cities...he's a physicist who's modeling things using statistics...don't know but city planners have always been using statistics...my friend U's friend, Pic and Save Bill, the owner of the old Pic and Save stores, figured out how many square blocks of suburbs each store needed to be profitable...Disney went to Stanford academics to study out where to build the first Anaheim Park...
quote
The search for the best spot finally ended in the rural Anaheim, California with a purchase of a 160-acre orange grove near the junction of the Santa Ana Freeway (I-5) and Harbor Boulevard.
http://www.justdisney.com/disneyland/history.html
unquote
Actually, Stanford's favored site was a bit south on Harbor, about where I snack at Denny's, but development was beginning to cover up the Orange Groves thereabout, my family's home being one such!
Well, the searches have given me a search word, 'morphogenesis'...if I glue that together with 'cities', I should find something...but before I look, let me note that I think the computer game makers are all over this, far beyond what West is about...they know the algorithms...so...a search: morphogenesis computer cities...hopefully something more than Simm City and Mind Craft will come up!...brb...
quote
Turing's theory helps explains all sorts of biological phenomena, from the pigmentation of seashells to the shapes of flowers and leaves and even the geometric structures seen in drug-induced hallucinations, according to Ermentrout.
Alan Turing's 'Morphogenesis' Theory Confirmed 60 Years After His Death
The Huffington Post | By David Freemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/alan-turing-morphogenesis-confirmed_n_4986583.html
unquote
That, that's an unexpected curio!...but let me refine the search by adding 'games'
Well, that takes me back to Procedural Generation which is where I was with the No Man's Sky post...
quote
In computing procedural generation is the method of creating data algorithmically rather than manually. In computer graphics it is commonly used for creating textures while in the context of video games it is also used for creating various other kinds of content such as items, quests or level geometry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
unquote
brb...continuing that search...
well, there's this, which takes a subscription to see:
quote
Morphogenesis:
Extracting Morphogens from Natural Systems and the Work of Alan Turing in Order to Intergrate Artificial Process into proposals for a Universal Design Engine
http://www.academia.edu/4038187/MORPHOGENESIS_Extracting_Morphogens_for_a_Universal_Design_Engine
unquote
and here's sort of what I was looking for, I think!...
quote
The Community land use game CLUG [1] of Cornell University was the precursor of all system models of urban development, using a tiled map and a team of human actors to execute the rules. The eventual transformation of this idea into a computer game - Sim City, illustrates how the development of computers has enabled more and more complex models to be developed.
Morphogenetic CA
69’ 40’ 33 north
unquote
The coordinates are Tromso in Norway...'CA' is computer architecture...brb...
quote (from same)
One example of the way micro morphology may influence global social organisation is that of the guild courtyards often found in pre-Islamic cities of the middle eastern type. In these ancient cities one often finds that culs-de-sac are occupied by single occupations (gold beaters court, leather sellers court etc). The conventional explanation is that these social structures have imposed the morphology on the city, by gathering together and closing off the street to through traffic. By exploring the morphogenetic system of these simple agglomerative cities, it is easy to observe that there is a tendency for all street systems to collapse into culs-de-sac, the one ended street is the natural state of equilibrium as it were. If this is true, then the courtyards are the inevitable topological outcome of the global agglomeration process and the guilds simply ‘occupy’ these pockets of space – or even stronger – they are themselves created by the morphological outcome.
unquote
Academic writing is very hard to read!...what I gather is that the town dwellers on the face of things, make the cul de sacs for their craft locations, but there is too an underlying thing about towns that creates the pockets...
It's easy to see people makes Cities...not so easy to see is that Cities make people, their occupations I mean, and how they go about their day to day...
And what I'm trying to reach for is that every species, every Fauna and Flora, is an occupation...in Nature, occupations have made distinctive body types for each occupation...this is what Darwin was about with theories of adaption...and Forests and Coral Reefs and Intertidal Zones and such, have an occupation too, to provide the environments for Faunas and Floras...and for Cities and us it's the same...and we're not just a new species, we're a new Kingdom, leastwise the beginning of one, biologically speaking--just give Cities a few million years to work on us!
quote
When Carl Linnaeus introduced the rank-based system of nomenclature into biology, the highest rank was given the name "kingdom" and was followed by four other main or principal ranks: the class, order, genus and species.[
unquote
It's the same 'this' and 'that'...
DavidDavid
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