Month: September 2021

The Zero Covid strategy continues to protect people, economies and freedoms more effectively

The G10 countries are far more affected by the pandemic in all aspects than the OECD countries that have opted for the Zero Covid strategy or similar, a representative benchmark of 82 million inhabitants of economically advanced democracies.

The number of deaths per million inhabitants was 44 times higher in the G10 countries, which means 1.1 million too many deaths by June 30, 2021. Economic performance, civil liberties and mobility were also worse.

Read the full article at: www.institutmolinari.org

Handbook on Cities and Complexity, edited by Juval Portugali

Written by some of the founders of complexity theory and complexity theories of cities (CTC), this Handbook expertly guides the reader through over forty years of intertwined developments: the emergence of general theories of complex self-organized systems and the consequent emergence of CTC. 

Examining studies from the end of 1970 through to the current leading approach to urbanism, planning and design, the book provides an up-to-date snapshot of CTC. Insightful chapters are split into five parts covering the early foundations of the topic, the evolution of towns and cities and urban complexity, the links between complexity, languages and cities, modelling traffic and parking in cities, and urban planning and design. The Handbook on Cities and Complexity concludes with the contributors’ personal statements on their observations of COVID-19’s impact upon global cities.
 
This book will be an invaluable resource for those researching cities and complexity and also for scholars of urban studies, planning, physics, mathematics, AI, and architecture.

More at: www.e-elgar.com

Mind the Mind Gap

Ricardo Hausmann

While developing countries have been catching up to their richer counterparts on some key metrics, they appear to be falling behind on others. Most worrisome is a growing gap in the local capabilities needed to make the most of new technological innovations.

Read the full article at: www.project-syndicate.org

W. Brian Arthur on Complexity Economics – Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast

Economies in the modern world are incredibly complex systems. But when we sit down to think about them in quantitative ways, it’s natural to keep things simple at first. We look for reliable relations between small numbers of variables, seek equilibrium configurations, and so forth. But those approaches don’t always work in complex systems, and sometimes we have to use methods that are specifically adapted to the challenges of complexity. That’s the perspective of W. Brian Arthur, a pioneer in the field of complexity economics, according to which economies are typically not in equilibrium, not made of homogeneous agents, and are being constantly updated. We talk about the basic ideas of complexity economics, how it differs from more standard approaches, and what it teaches us about the operation of real economies.

Listen at: www.preposterousuniverse.com