Theories and Models of Urbanization

This book provides a thorough discussion about fundamental questions regarding urban theories and modeling. It is a curated collection of contributions to a workshop held in Paris on October 12th and 13th 2017 at the Institute of Complex Systems by the team of ERC GeoDiverCity. There are several chapters conveying the answers given by single authors to problems of conceptualization and modeling and others in which scholars reply to their conception and question them. Even, the chapters transcribing keynote presentations were rewritten according to contributions from the respective discussions. The result is a complete “state of the art” of what is our knowledge about urban processes and their possible formalization.

Author Biography

Denise Pumain trained in geography at Ecole Normale Supérieure; she was lecturer at University Paris I from 1970, researcher at the National Institute of Demography (1981–1986), Professor at University Paris 13 (1986–1989) then at University Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne, member of the Institut Universitaire de France, Former Chair of the Commission on Urban Development and Urban Life of the IGU (1992–2000), founder of the research laboratory P.A.R.I.S. (1984), Director of the UMR Géographie-cités (CNRS 1992–2000), the European Research Group S4 (Spatial Simulation for Social Sciences, 2006–2013), Cybergeo, European Journal of Geography (founded 1996), Principal Investigator of the ERC advanced grant GeoDiverCity, http://geodivercity.parisgeo.cnrs.fr/blog/ (2011–2016). Her main scientific contribution is about building an evolutionary theory of urban systems and transferring concepts and models from self-organizing complex systems toward social sciences. She was chief executive of education and research for the Académie de Grenoble (2000–2001) and first scientific coordinator for social sciences at the French Agency for research assessment (2007–2008). She was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa at University of Lausanne and Liege and silver medal of the CNRS and Vautrin Lud International Prize in Geography in 2010. She is corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2009 and corresponding fellow of the British Academy since 2012. She is officer in French Order “Legion d’honneur” and “Ordre du merite.”