---
id: books/the-new-science-of-cities
about:
  label: The New Science of Cities
  description: >-
    Michael Batty's 2013 argument that cities are flows and networks rather than
    fixed artefacts, with the models that follow from treating them that way.
  tags:
    - cities
    - networks
    - flows
    - simulation
    - complexity
  depiction: cover.jpg
book:
  authors:
    - Michael Batty
  publisher: MIT Press
  year: 2013
  isbn: '9780262019521'
  url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20228583W'
domains:
  - places
  - mobility
  - people
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: The New Science of Cities - Michael Batty - Google Books
      url: 'https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780262534567'
    - title: 'Open Library: The New Science of Cities'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20228583W'
  created: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed: '2026-10-17'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Batty proposes that a city is better understood as a set of flows and networks than as a collection of buildings in space, and builds a science of cities on that footing from complexity theory, urban economics and transport theory. The book works through city size, internal structure, transport routes and location, and then through models of growing elaboration, from simple random processes to land-use and transport models. Its closing chapters turn to design and decision models for cities that do not yet exist and treat urban design as something a group of people does together.

For a twin builder it is the theoretical spine behind most urban simulation: which quantities to carry, which interactions matter, and why the model of a city must be a model of its movements and connections, not a map with attributes.

Cover via Open Library.