Planning for the Future of Cities

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Cities are in the direct path of potential disasterd and like coral reefs, very, very vulnerable to that. So there's this dual need to think about how adapt and also how to mitigate. We have excellent models for predicting where we will experience more extreme weather events. What we don't have is a really good grasp on what we're actually doing. This is myfield, planning comes in. And there is a lot of work to be done in terms of how we plan cities,. How we're planning for these futures.

The concept of the city is a crucial one for human civilization: people living in proximity, bringing in resources from outside, separated from the labors of subsistence so they can engage in the trade of goods and ideas. But we are still learning how cities grow and adapt to new conditions, as well as how we can best guide them to be livable as well as functional. I talk with urban scientist Catherine Brinkley about the structure of cities, including the fractal nature of their shapes, as well as what we can do to make cities thrive as much as possible.

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Catherine Brinkley received a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning as well as a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently Associate Professor of Human Ecology and Faculty Director at the Center for Regional Change at the University of California, Davis. She has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, and the Santa Fe Institute.