Towards a Science of Cities

The recent availability of data about various aspects of cities allows us to envision a science of cities validated by empirical observations. In this talk, I will discuss and illustrate with examples three major points that constitute the pillars of such a program: data (focusing on mobile phone data), modeling (including parsimonious models, simulations, and digital twins), and links with policymakers and planners.

Speaker

Marc Barthelemy is a former student of the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris (rue d’Ulm). After his thesis on random walks in random media, Marc focused on disordered systems and their properties, and since 1992, he has held a permanent position at the CEA. Marc is now Research Director at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (IPhT) in Saclay and a member of the Center of Social Analysis and Mathematics (CAMS) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).

His research interests moved towards applications of statistical physics to complex systems, complex networks, theoretical epidemiology, and more recently on spatial networks. Focusing on both data analysis and modeling with the tools of statistical physics, Marc is also working on various aspects of the science of cities, including urban morphology, transport networks and mobility, scaling in cities, etc.

Marc published 160+ papers in international journals, and various books for Cambridge University Press (Structure and Dynamics of Cities, 2016), Springer (Morphogenesis of Spatial Networks, 2018; Spatial networks, 2022), Oxford University Press (Statistics and Dynamics of Urban Populations, to appear 2023), and for the French publisher Odile Jacob (Le monde des réseaux, 2023).

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For more information: citiesarebackintown@sciencespo.fr