Cities physics prospect

Referência da AMICOR Maria Inês Reinert Azambuja

Cities are complex environments. Planning interventions that borrow principles from theoretical physics could help to improve peoples' lives.

Subject terms:

• Society
• Complexity
• Theoretical physics

Jan Kallwejt

The ideal city. That was what the French had in mind when they made Hanoi the capital of colonial Indochina at the turn of the twentieth century. To modernize the tropical city, French administrators, technocrats and engineers built railways, bridges and an opera house. But rather than becoming a symbol of success in their southeast Asian colonial project, Hanoi became an example of urban apartheid. The European quarter was renovated with wide, tree-lined avenues, and large, spacious villas. Whereas the old quarter, home to the native Indochinese, was a place of narrow roads and overcrowded buildings./.../