This is a transcript of a talk delivered at the Bartlett school of Architecture on March 24th 2010, as part of a series of seminars held by the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London. This is my first academic seminar, in which I lay out some of my research aims and their conceptual underpinnnings.

An analysis of large-scale data from the location-based social network Foursquare, looking at how the urban can be sensed in an age of ubiquitous computing. This work presents an image of the city in terms of social interaction densities.

Sketching out a valid ontological basis for the ‘city’ as an object of research. A discussion of Manuel De Landa’s assemblage theory in an urban context.

An overview of the status of ‘centrality’ as a concept in urban discourse, including visualisations, models, graph theory, and its relation to centricity and centralisation.

A transcript of a talk delivered at Cognitive Cities, a conference on networked cities held in Berlin on 26th Feb 2011. The talk is organised into projects relating to ‘interactions’, ‘boundaries’, ‘flows’ and ‘evolution’, showcasing various information visualisations, dynamic models and simulations relating to the Living City.

This is my first academic working paper (pdf). I conduct a spatial analysis of data from a location-based (LBS) social network, exploring the distribution of social activity in a city. I conduct a comparative analysis of three cities (London, New York, Paris), examining polycentricity, fragmentation and centralisation. These measures are used to discuss the spatial structure of the cities in question. I identify social hubs and examine the distribution of these “central places”. Finally, I discuss the wider impact of LBS technologies on urban analysis.

Allometry is the study of the relationship between size and shape, first outlined by Otto Snell in 1892 and Julian Huxley in 1932. In this short essay I discuss the work of Bettencourt & West, examining how urban allometry compares to that of the biological world.

On the miscibility of concepts within the fields of software development and urban planning, including design patterns, APIs, version control and beta testing.

A network analysis of over 1.4 million trips on the London Cyclehire network. Clustering, influence, assortativity and modularity are discussed in terms of this network of urban flows. This is a draft working paper (Jan 2011).