Spatial Complexity

A Course of 8 Lectures at ASU, Fall 2011

This course provides an outline of the complexity sciences with a specific focus on spatial systems such as cities, regions, built environments and related human systems. A particular perspective that is developed is related to the distribution of entities that comprise such systems with a focus on scaling, emergence, and nonlinearity, set within the wider context of new modeling styles such as those involving agents and cells, agent based modeling (ABM) and cellular automata (CA).

Lecture 1: Defining Complexity

Lecture 2: Hierarchies, Emergence, Feedback, and NonLinearity

Lecture 3:  Simple Spatial Growth Models: The Origins of Scaling in Size Distributions

Lecture 4: Scaling and Size Distributions: Rank Size and Urban Dynamics

Lecture 5: Networks and Flows

Lecture 6: Modeling Spatial Interaction

Lecture 7: Entropy, Complexity, and Information

Lecture 8:  Extending Complexity: Coupling Spatial Interaction Models