Sustaining Glasgow's Urban Networks: the Link Communities of Complex Urban Systems

As cities grow in population size and became more crowded (UN DESA, 2018), the main future challenges around the world will remain to be accommodating the growing urban population while drastically reducing environmental pressure. Contemporary urban agglomerations (large or small) constantly impose burden on the natural environment by conveying ecosystem services to close and distant places, through coupled human nature [infrastructure] systems (CHANS). Tobler’s first law in geography (1970) that states that “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” is now challenged by globalization. When this law was first established, the hypothesis referred to geological processes (Campbell and Shin, 2012, p.194) that were predominantly observed in pre-globalized economy, where freight was costly and mainly localized (Zhang et al., 2018). With the recent advances and modernisation made in transport technologies, most of them in the sea and air transportation (Zhang et al., 2018) and the growth of cities in population, natural resources and bi-products now travel great distances to infiltrate cities (Neuman, 2006) and satisfy human demands. Technical modernisation and the global hyperconnectivity of human interactions and trading, in the last thirty years alone resulted with staggering 94 per cent growth of resource extraction and consumption (Giljum et al., 2015). Local geographies (Kennedy, Cuddihy and Engel-Yan, 2007) will remain affected by global urbanisation (Giljum et al., 2015), and as a corollary, the operational inefficiencies of their local infrastructure networks, will contribute even more to the issues of environmental unsustainability on a global scale. Another challenge for future city-regions is the equity of public infrastructure services and policy creation that promote the same (Neuman and Hull, 2009). Public infrastructure services refer to services provisioned by networked infrastructure, which are subject to both public obligation and market rules. Therefore, their accessibility to all citizens needs to be safeguarded. The disparity of growth between networked infrastructure and socio-economic dynamics affects the sustainable assimilation and equal access to infrastructure in various districts in cities, rendering it as a privilege. Yet, the empirical evidence of whether the place of residence acts as a disadvantage to public service access and use, remains rather scarce (Clifton et al., 2016). The European Union recognized (EU, 2011) the issue of equality in accessibility (i.e. equity) critical for territorial cohesion and sustainable development across districts, municipalities and regions with diverse economic performance. Territorial cohesion, formally incorporated into the Treaty of Lisbon, now steers the policy frameworks of territorial development within the Union. Subsequently, the European Union developed a policy paradigm guided by equal access (Clifton et al., 2016) to public infrastructure services, considering their accessibility as instrumental aspect in achieving territorial cohesion across and within its member states. A corollary of increasing the equity to public infrastructure services among growing global population is the potential increase in environmental pressure they can impose, especially if this pressure is not decentralised and surges at unsustainable rate (Neuman, 2006). This danger varies across countries and continents, and is directly linked to the increase of urban population due to; [1] improved quality of life and increased life expectancy and/or [2] urban in-migration of rural population and/or [3] global political or economic immigration. These three rising urban trends demand new approaches to reimagine planning and design practices that foster infrastructure equity, whilst delivering environmental justice. Therefore, this research explores in depth the nature of growth of networked infrastructure (Graham and Marvin, 2001) as a complex system and its disparity from the socio-economic growth (or decline) of Glasgow and Clyde Valley city-region. The results of this research gain new understanding in the potential of using emerging tools from network science for developing optimization strategy that supports more cecentralized, efficient, fair and (as an outcome) sustainable enlargement of urban infrastructure, to accommodate new and empower current residents of the city. Applying the novel link clustering community detection algorithm (Ahn et al., 2010) in this thesis I have presented the potential for better understanding the complexity behind the urban system of networked infrastructure, through discovering their overlapping communities. As I will show in the literature review (Chapter 2), the long standing tradition of centralised planning practice relying on zoning and infiltrating infrastructure, left us with urban settlements which are failing to respond to the environmental pressure and the socio-economic inequalities. Building on the myriad of knowledge from planners, geographers, sociologists and computer scientists, I developed a new element (i.e. link communities) within the theory of urban studies that defines cities as complex systems. After, I applied a method borrowed from the study of complex networks to unpack their basic elements. Knowing the link (i.e. functional, or overlapping) communities of metropolitan Glasgow enabled me to evaluate the current level of communities interconnectedness and reveal the gaps as well as the potentials for improving the studied system’s performance. The complex urban system in metropolitan Glasgow was represented by its networked infrastructure, which essentially was a system of distinct sub-systems, one of them mapped by a physical and the other one by a social graph. The conceptual framework for this methodological approach was formalised from the extensively reviewed literature and methods utilising network science tools to detect community structure in complex networks. The literature review led to constructing a hypothesis claiming that the efficiency of the physical network’s topology is achieved through optimizing the number of nodes with high betweenness centrality, while the efficiency of the logical network’s topology is achieved by optimizing the number of links with high edge betweenness. The conclusion from the literature review presented through the discourse on to the primal problem in 7.4.1, led to modelling the two network topologies as separate graphs. The bipartite graph of their primal syntax was mirrored to be symmetrical and converted to dual. From the dual syntax I measured the complete accessibility (i.e. betweenness centrality) of the entire area and not only of the streets. Betweenness centrality of a node measures the number of shortest paths that pass through the node connecting pairs of nodes. The betweenness centrality is same as the integration of streets in space syntax, where the streets are analysed in their dual syntax representation. Street integration is the number of intersections the street shares with other streets and a high value means high accessibility. Edges with high betweenness are shared between strong communities. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of the network’s modularity and community structure analysed herein, it can be concluded that a complex network that is both robust and efficient (and in urban planning terminology ‘sustainable’) is consisted of numerous strong communities connected with each other by optimal number of links with high edge betweenness. To get this insight, the study detected the edge cut-set and vertex cut-set of the complex network. The outcome was a statistical model developed in the open source software R (Ihaka and Gentleman, 1996). The model empirical detects the network’s overlapping communities, determining the current sustainability of its physical and logical topologies. Initially, an assumption was that the number of communities within the infrastructure (physical) network layer were different from the one in the logical. They were detected using the Louvain method that performs graph partitioning on the hierarchical streets structure. Further, the number of communities in the relational network layer (i.e. accessibility to locations) was detected based on the OD accessibility matrix established from the functional dependency between the household locations and predefined points of interest. The communities from the graph of the ‘relational layer' were discovered with the single-link hierarchical clustering algorithm. The number of communities observed in the physical and the logical topologies of the eight shires significantly deviated

The East-West Arc, Re-thinking Growth in the London Region

The East-West Arc spans 30 local councils comprising the growth corridor from Oxford through Milton Keynes and Northampton to Cambridge. Its population of over three million is the fastest growing region in the UK . It forms the northern fringe of the greater London city region to which it is profitably tied, just north of the Green Belt. History, knowledge, technology, agriculture and nature combine in a rich tapestry that has long contributed to the commonwealth of the United Kingdom. In a globalizing world where distances of all kinds are slashed, the Arc is more than a key part of the greater London region. It is a gateway north to the Midlands and the Northern Powerhouse. The Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge Gateway is one of the most innovative and dynamic areas of the UK. Its potential is recognised by the government as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the region to become a ‘knowledge-intensive growth cluster, competing globally’. Yet that potential is capped by inadequate infrastructure and expensive housing, as well as ecological constraints. As HS2, along with the train and expressway linking Oxford and Cambridge become realities, this vital region can be seen better as a gateway in all directions, thus helping to rebalance growth across the UK. The day-long symposium on the East-West Arc held at the University of Westminster in June of 2018 addressed these challenges from a range of perspectives. Traversing the Arc from south to north is the proposed high-speed rail line HS2, as well as the planned east-west expressway and east-west rail line linking Oxford to Cambridge through Milton Keynes. These transport links, taken together, are intended to enhance connectivity, mobility and productivity across the region. This will further boost growth while presenting financing and environmental challenges along with its benefits. The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) report from 2017, Partnering for Prosperity: A new deal for the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford Arc, set out one vision and approach to infrastructure-led development linked to place making. It also set out new thinking on the housing challenge in the region that is equivalent to a new city the size of Birmingham. Other impacts of growth also need to be addressed, such as last mile connectivity and multi-modal transport, social inequities, land consumption of agriculture and forests, greater flood risk, pollution, and loss of ecological function and integrity of historical region including its villages and towns. These are but a few of the impacts that need to be addressed by an assessment of growth scenarios and their impacts, in advance of the foreseen major infrastructure projects. Government has long recognised the strategic importance of the Arc, and not just to the region itself, comprised of three recently-formed regional growth boards in Milton Keynes, Oxford and Cambridge. Central to the Arc is its relationship to London, the west of England and the synergies with the Midlands and further north. This greater London Region contains the UK’s primary transport hubs and corridors, including the main north-south road and rail routes, together with key international gateways such as Heathrow and Birmingham airports and the seaports of Harwich, Felixstowe and the Thames Gateway in the east. While the long history of this greater region has unfolded piece meal, it is now interconnected into a functioning mega-region that needs a coherent strategy founded by cogent analysis. In this context, it is critical to envision the East-West Arc as gateway that enables in all directions, and not merely as a self-contained sub-region or as a northern fringe of London

Smart Sustainable City

The term “smart city” has recently become a popular buzzword with as many taints and shades of meaning as urban life itself. Not only does it describe the applicatons of technology to urban infrastructure and service provision, it has also become an umbrella containing all manner of innovatve management and organizaton. It attracts stakeholders coming from different branches of industry, who perceive it as a chance to develop and sell products and services. Because of this successful marketng, the concept of smart city will contnue to develop and be adopted, whether we as urban planners and designers, support this growth or not. Smart city implies a systematc approach to the urban economy using telecommunicaton, informaton and communicaton technologies [01]. Smart City as a concept is currently understood as authorites using technology to beter manage the city. Smart cites initatves around the world are driven by the pressure on public fnancing, climate change, producton of energy, limits of resources and rapid urban populaton growth. Wirz Schneider [01] lists Smart Economy/stakeholder management, Smart Buildings, Smart Mobility, Good Governance, Smart Grids and Technologies and Scarcity of resources and energy producton as some of the key factors of the urban assets of smart city initatves. ISOCARP has been involved in “smart cites” for many years, and this is reflected in Society programming and artcles in previous issues of the Review. Former ISOCARP President Alfonso Vegara was a leader in this movement. In 2004, he authored the book Territorios Inteligentes describing the Spanish natonal program for a regional system of smart cites. More recently ISOCARP collaborated in many global events that focus on smart cites. At the May 2016 Metropolitan Solutons conference in Berlin, ISOCARP coordinated with public and private sector organizatons on smart city planning. In October 2016, Habitat III in Quito had several sessions devoted to this topic, and ISOCARP was engaged in many of these as a partner with UN-Habitat and the Global Planners Network. In 2017, the theme for the ISOCARP World Planning Congress was “Smart Communites” with an emphasis on blending technology with social, environmental, and economic planning theory and practce. These programs were revisited earlier this year at the World Urban Forum where ISOCARP organized a session devoted to “Internatonal Smart Cites”, again in coordinaton with UN-Habitat and the Global Planners Network. ISOCARP members have also been actve in promotng smart city discussions through sessions organized at multple events including several American Planning Associaton conferences, Moscow Urban Forums, REAL CORP conferences, Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cites and Regions conferences, and many others