ABSTRACT
Though no universal definition of complexity exists, many research approaches towards the study of urban traffic, especially in areas of mobilities studies and the mathematical algorithmic approaches of computer modelling and simulations, draw on the ‘science’ of complexity and attempt to engage with and to evolve outcomes that reveal ‘complex characteristics,’ such as autopoiesis, nonlinearity, and emergence. This chapter outlines some of these complex characteristics and explores what the notion of complexity might mean for the development of a metaphysics of affect and of experiential complexity as an approach for the study of complex urban processes and relationalities, such as urban traffic. In doing so, the chapter explores the challenges in studying complex adaptive systems, such as the existence of unknown unknowns, the co-constitutional relationships between entity and environment, and the development of languages of nature or givenness to better inform models of representation closer aligned with the nature of the phenomenon under investigation. Drawing on empirical traffic events in Ho Chi Minh City, this chapter explores the limitations of an approach embedded in paradigms of reductionism and disjunction.
