Systems of Cities

Este curso ofrece una aproximación a los sistemas urbanos desde una perspectiva integral con diferentes escalas con el propósito de exponer al estudiante ante las diferentes relaciones urbanas y regionales en el marco de los sistemas urbanos. El curso está diseñado para estudiantes del programa de gestión y desarrollo urbanos (GDU) a través de una aproximación contemporánea a los sistemas urbanos abordando las escalas interregionales, intrarregionales y globales desde una perspectiva integral. Este curso ofrece una aproximación acerca de la conformación de conglomeraciones humanas comprendiendo la necesidad de ofrecer servicios urbanos a la población dentro un marco que implica la presencia de instituciones y organizaciones que faciliten a las personas acceder a la satisfacción de necesidades colectivas. En este sentido, el curso ofrece al estudiante la oportunidad de comprender la configuración y transformación de las ciudades y como dicho proceso está relacionado con la existencia y desarrollo de los sistemas urbanos. Desde esta perspectiva, el curso busca comprender la complejidad de la gestión, provisión, administración y demanda de servicios urbanos, entendidos como servicios públicos,sociales e infraestructura, como hechos territoriales y urbanos, inherentes a la función social del Estado Social de Derecho. El curso ofrece una introducción a los servicios urbanos básicos, que incluyen los equipamientos, son un aspecto neurálgico de la organización de la sociedad y del desarrollo urbano. Por consiguiente, el curso aborda la provisión de servicios urbanos comprendiendo aspectos relacionados con el derecho de las ciudadanos de gozar de los beneficios de la urbanización y el mejoramiento de la calidad de vida a través de la provisión de servicios como parte de la articulación entre los diferentes sistemas urbanos desde un perspectiva de inclusión. El curso incluye el trabajo en grupo por parte de los estudiantes en diferentes sistemas urbanos como tambien tareas y ejercicios relacionados con los contenidos del curso.

Secondary cities comprise over 16% of the world's population. They play an important role in the development and operations of countries as intermediary hubs and logistics centres within national industry supply chains and production systems. They serve around 22% of the world's population living in metropolitan regions and 62% of those in smaller regional cities, towns and rural areas. As such, they have a key role to play in supporting post-COVID-19 recovery efforts. Secondary cities have, until recent years, been a neglected area of public policy and investment, especially in emerging economies. This book includes a series of vignettes presented as chapters by authors with significant knowledge and experience of disaster recovery. It provides
different perspectives on what can be done to support the sustainable and regenerative development of secondary cities in developing countries post COVID-19 do to support the sustainable and regenerative development of secondary cities in developing countries post COVID-19. These perspectives cover topics in economic and community development, infrastructure, finance, local government, logistics and governance. The book provides policy and planning recommendations, as well as practical initiatives and approaches that secondary cities can use. The book is intended for leaders and policymakers responsible for the development of secondary cities, but it will be of interest to other readers involved in urban and regional development recovery efforts post-COVID-19.

Systems of secondary cities play a vital intermediary role as economic, administrative and logistics hubs within national and global systems of cities. They have three basic spatial typologies: regional hubs, metropolitan clusters, and corridors. The pattern, rate of development, and role of systems of secondary cities are changing rapidly in response to urbanization, globalization, structural economic change, new technologies, and the rapid development of transport and communications systems. These changes have resulted in a growing gap and inequities in sub-national regional economic development, income, wealth, investment, and employment opportunities within systems of secondary cities. Closing the gap has become a significant challenge for governments. Much of the literature on the development of secondary cities tended to focus on enhancing the competitiveness of infrastructure, industry clusters, and enabling environments; however, there has been a tendency to overlook the importance of external factors: connectivity, networks, and collaboration, which significantly affect the performance of systems of secondary cities. This book seeks to address this knowledge gap. It examines ways secondary cities can work more collaboratively to improve their development prospects, lift prosperity, and leverage public resources to support equitable and sustainable sub-national economic growth and development. It outlines ways governments and other stakeholders within systems of secondary cities can invest strategically in public goods and services, improve connectivity, develop networks, and leverage common user facilities, infrastructure, and resources at different geographic levels to support inclusive, equitable, and sustainable development.

This paper presents an incremental method of parsimonious modelling using intensive and quantitative evaluation. It is applied to a research question in urban geography, namely how well a simple and generic model of a system of cities can reproduce the evolution of Soviet urbanisation. We compared the ability of two models with different levels of complexity to satisfy goals at two levels. The macro-goal is to simulate the evolution of the system’s hierarchical structure. The micro-goal is to simulate its micro-dynamics in a realistic way. The evaluation of the models is based on empirical data through a calibration that includes sensitivity analysis using genetic algorithms and distributed computing. We show that a simple model of spatial interactions cannot fully reproduce the observed evolution of Soviet urbanisation from 1959 to 1989. A better fit was achieved when the model’s structure was complexified with two mechanisms. Our evaluation goals were assessed through intensive sensitivity analysis. The complexified model allowed us to simulate the evolution of the Soviet urban hierarchy.

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/18/4/9.html