syntax

legibility, space

strong attempt to propositionally phrase an engagement of cities and complexity both ontologically and epistemologically. Complexity, for Portugali, rooted in material science, is aimed to be considered as part of cognitive science when the city is included in the equation. The approach of complexity called a 'new science of cities' (p. 2) mostly bared on quantitative methods and modelling approaches. These terms and parameters sound quite solid. Seemingly, a new goal emerges and intersects with the one above: to fill the gap 'between the quantitative and the hermeneutic' (p. 2) approaches to the city. It appears to be a sign of accepting the city as an organic entity and also an analyzable system; however, as stressed in the book, the hermeneutic aspect has not been sufficiently addressed.
The main purpose of this book seems to present a panorama on cities and complexity starting from introducing the foundations and theories of complexity of cities, the way city complexity meets with the fact of language, the approaches and tools to modelling complex cities, how we deal with city complexity in planning and design, and cities and complexity in the time of Covid-19.
The book is structured in three sections in general reflecting the issue of complexity of cities: the introduction, the different parts, and the epilogue. It contains several main parts, in addition to an opening introduction and a finalizing epilogue. The introduction uncovers a preface by the editor. Five main parts give body to the content. Each of them is organized into two to six chapters, being written by different authors and based on several topics varied in the conceptions, approaches, methodologies and arguments regarding the complexity of cities. Finally, the epilogue employs a broad spectrum of discussion of cities and complexity in the time of Covid-19 by the authors of the book.
In the introduction part, on the one hand, the editor of the book, Juval Portugali, pointing at complexity theories of cities (CTC), uncovers the parts of the book in detail after making a brief prologue to the emergence and concentration of CTC in the past decades by noting the 'small stream of studies that started at end of 1970' (p. 1) and the evolution of it 'to its current position as a dominant approach to urban dynamics, planning and design' (p. 1). The finalizing epilogue part of the book, on the other hand, eliciting the issue of cities and complexity in the time of Covid-19, reflects the up-to-date condition of the book that focused on the insights of 2021 as the editor notes in the introduction.
The main parts include the titles as follows: Part I Foundations; Part II Complexity Theories of Cities; Part III Complexity, Language and Cities; Part IV Modelling Complex Cities; Part V Complexity, Planning and Design. In particular, the main parts raise several issues such as conceptual basics of cities and complexity, complexity theories of cities ranging from evolution and planning to fractals and cybernetics, creating and discussing the language of complexity of cities with emphasis on the scientific problems and on dialectics as a driver, modelling complex cities regarding urban traffic and parking, implications and developments of design and planning of complex cities.
To extract respectively, the book, in general, covers a variety of concepts related to complexity theories of cities (CTS) -which can be classified by the future readers of the book according to their reading or research aims -such as complex system, complex adaptive systems (CAS), uniqueness of complex cities, cities as hybrid complex systems, new science of cities, self-organization, fractals, phase transition, free energy, entropy, synergetics, organized complexity, the rank size rule, central places hierarchies, gravityinteraction models, urban scaling, allometry, major transitions, order of cities, dissipative structures, interpretive modelling of cities, synergetic inter-representation networks (SIRN), information adaptation (IA), multifractal approach, Fractalopolis, cybernetic cities, pattern language, interaction between urban agents, the nature of order, wholeness, coherence, symmetries, sub-symmetries, adaptations, structure preserving transformations, beauty, legibility, space syntax, urban simulation modelling, urban modality phenomenon, subsystems, road networks, big data, dynamic urban rhythm, path dependence, uncertainty and planning, chaotic urban reality, general theory of nudging, dynamics of new urban reality, evolutionary game theory (EGT), manipulation of the environment, chromesthesia (mental time travel).
The book also makes a valuable contribution by addressing some theoreticians (some of them are writers in the book) of city complexity and the neighboring approaches such as Hermann Haken with the theory of synergetics; Michael Batty with complexity theory of cities; Christopher Alexander with A City is not a Tree, A Pattern Language, The Nature of Order; Bill Hillier with space syntax; Kevin Lynch with legibility. Additionally, several new or adopted suggestions, arguments, formulations, propositions from the authors of the chapters are noteworthy. To illustrate: Stephen Marshall and Nick Green 'propose six major transitions in understanding, each relating to recognition of a new perspective: of living beings as complex things; of Homo sapiens as just another species; of organized complexity as a "good thing"; of the necessary social dimension of urban complexity; of diversity as a necessary dimension of social complexity; and, finally, the wicked nature in intervention in complexity' (p. 64). Carlos Gershenson, Paolo Santi and Carlo Ratti 'sketch an urban theory that addresses the requirements to build cybernetic cities ' (p. 198) where the requirements are defined as three components: 'information, algorithms and agents ' (p. 198). Alan Penn introduces space syntax yet adding that this theory's main concern is to understand the 'human society, the environments it designs and builds and the interplay between the two' (p. 253). Koen Bandsma, Ward Rauws, and Gert de Roo suggest a methodology by exploring 'how a self-organisation perspective on behavioral pattern production and reproduction can inform the design of nudges in addressing these patterns in public space' (p. 332).
The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and practitioners who are involved in research of urban planning and development. It explores a very specific and concurrently interdisciplinary topic with a wide-arrayed overview of it helping to better understand the background ideas, arguments, approaches and technical tools of them. It enables the reader to engage the term complexity of cities while explicitly acknowledging its position in scientific and practical worlds.