ABSTRACT
The claim that plans are useful or effective for improving the efficiency of cities surprisingly lacks both theoretical and empirical backing. The main distinction of the urban planning profession from other professions that apply planning techniques is that the former deals with large, complex systems, whereas the latter focus on smaller, simpler ones, including business administration. Considering cities as complex networks of decisions blends the activities and physical settings into a whole, rather than treating the two sets of elements as separate, independent entities as traditionally perceived in urban studies research. The interaction between the activities and physical settings is thus taken into account explicitly in our model. Activities are roughly analogous to making and realizing decisions that shape and are shaped by the physical settings. The traditional urban planning problem of land-use activities vs. transportation facilities is a case in point. In other words, the chapter considers cities as complex systems of linked decisions.
